NCRI, 13 Feb 2013 – The UN’s representative in Iraq Martin Kobler should be charged with crimes against humanity for setting up the ‘death camp’ Liberty and allowing its residents to be murdered, a former head of protection at Ashraf has said.

Brigadier General David Philips said America had abandoned the residents of Camp Liberty to the hands of the ‘Iranian puppet’, Iraqi Prime Minster Nouri Al-Maliki.

And he asked how Mr Kobler could live with himself after ‘setting the condition’ for the attack on Camp Liberty to happen.
Speaking at a Paris ceremony on Monday to honor the victims of the attack in which seven people were killed and at least 100 were injured, he demanded: “Martin Kobler, how do you live with yourself?

“You set the conditions for these murders to occur, and yet you refuse to even go to the scene of the atrocities. What do the mullahs’ regime have on you? What do they hold over your head?”

He said the promise to protect Ashraf residents had been ‘hollow’, adding: “It was just words. I didn’t believe that at the time. I believed those words but now know they were just words to convince the people of Ashraf to ‘lay down your arms. Give over your safety and security to us. Place yourself at the hands of others. Trust us’.

“And what did we do? You were abandoned into the hands of the Iranian puppet Al-Maliki.”

Last year, Brigadier Philips said he was also involved in convincing the people of Ashraf they would be protected when they moved to Liberty.

But he added: “I have to tell you, I was very hesitant at that, but I believed them, that you’ll be protected, we’ll make sure nothing happens to you. The United Nations will be there, and it’s going to be a way station. You’re going to go there and then you’re going to fly out someplace else.

“Well, we know how that promise went. You left a home of over 30 years and moved to a detention camp on the outskirts of Baghdad called Camp Liberty. Don’t worry, you’ll be safe. We’re going to protect you.

“What a flashback to 2003, 2004 for me. The same words, exact same words were used with the leadership last year that were used back at Camp Ashraf in the headquarters building.

“Well, the leadership people at Ashraf trusted us and what did you get? Suffering, unbearable torment at the hands of the Iraqi captors, your personal property pilfered, stolen, destroyed, your homes destroyed.

“Even the Martyr’s Cemetery at Camp Ashraf vandalized. We watched as what was supposed to be a temporary refugee camp has become a death camp.

“I don’t even use the word concentration camp anymore. Camp Liberty is a death camp. And to think the United Nations mission under Martin Kobler sanctioned a death camp knowingly.”

And he told Mr Kobler: “Not only should you have raced to the scene of the crime, you should have been there all along. You should have been living inside of Camp Liberty, ensuring the residents’ protection.

“Martin Kobler, you should be charged with crimes against humanity. You set up a death camp, you’re complicit into premeditated murder of the individuals out there that you are charged with their safety and security. Your actions are despicable.

“You know, through all of this though the Iranian Resistance is alive and will remain alive, and will bring freedom and democracy back to Iran. The mullah’s regime directed those attacks, there’s no doubt, against the resistance members.

“Because they fear what you stand for. They fear the Iranian Resistance will succeed, which they will, in replacing the evil that now rules in Iran, and they’ll replace it with a government of virtue and righteousness.

“The martyrs we mourn today had something the evil regime doesn’t understand: faith. The members of the resistance have great faith, faith in knowing that their cause is just and their faith in belief that men and women deserve freedom.”

He said the residents of Liberty currently had no freedom, adding: “What happens if they march to the front gate and want to go to the market down in Baghdad to buy some food? That’s right, they’ll be shot going out. What type of refugee camp is that?”