BAGHDAD (AP) September 10, 2016 – A camp housing members of an Iranian opposition group in Iraq was officially closed after the last 280 residents were flown to Albania on Friday, the group said.
The Mujahedeen-e-Khalq has been based in Iraq since the 1980s, U.S.-led forces disarmed the group after the 2003 invasion and settled them at a base north of Baghdad.
The U.S. military in Iraq signed an agreement with the group in 2004, promising that members would be treated as “protected persons” under the Fourth Geneva Convention. The State Department removed the group from its list of terrorist organizations in 2012.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon thanked member states and international organizations for “the successful resolution of this humanitarian issue,” in statement issued by his spokesman.
Iraqi forces raided Camp Ashraf, the group’s longtime base north of Baghdad, in 2009, shortly after U.S.-led forces handed over responsibility for the camp to the Iraqi government. The group was later relocated to a former military base in the capital.
Over the past six years, armed groups periodically attacked the camps, resulting in the deaths of more than 100 MEK members. The United Nations was concerned about the security of remaining members as long as they were in Iraq, where elements of the government and pro-Iranian militias were hostile to them.
More than 20 members were killed in a missile attack on their camp last year. In September 2013 at least 52 people were shot dead in Camp Ashraf, in what the MEK said was an attack by Iraqi security forces. In April 2011 clashes erupted during an Iraqi army raid on Camp Ashraf, killing 34 people, according to the U.N.