Professor Sir Richard Roberts, a prominent British-American biochemist and the Nobel Laureate in Medicine in 1993, and the Chief Scientific Officer in New England Biolabs, in a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon emphasized Camp Liberty residents’ rights as asylum seekers under international protection and wrote: “Expressing my support for the rights of these Iranian refugees and my abhorrence about the pressures and medical siege imposed by the Iraqi government, I am requesting that you call on the Iraqi government in the most stringent terms to end the illegal and inhumane medical siege on Liberty residents and to allow them, like all Iraqi civilians, to have open access to medical services.”
The text of the letter of Professor Roberts is as follows:
His Excellency Ban Ki-moon
United Nations Secretary-General
Dear Mr. Secretary-General:
As one of the 1993 Nobel Laureates in Physiology or Medicine I am writing this letter to express my deepest concerns regarding the status of exiled Iranians in Camp Liberty, Iraq. I have long been following the status of these Iranian refugees and the cruel repression imposed on them by the Iraqi government.
You probably know that a Liberty resident by the name of Mr. Behrooz Rahimian suffered a cardiac arrest and lost his life on 23 December 2012, a month after government agents and Army intelligence officers prevented his hospitalization in Baghdad. Behrooz Rahimian suffered severe pains in his thorax on 25 November 2012 and was transferred to a hospital in Baghdad as an urgent patient where physicians at the hospital sought to hospitalize him in the CCU. However, government agents and Army intelligence officers intervened and by pressuring the doctors, forced them to refrain from hospitalizing him. Behrooz Rahimian is the second individual to lose his life in Camp Liberty due to the harsh conditions and restrictions, couples with a failure to provide adequate medical care. Before him, engineer Bardia Mostofian suffered a heart attack and died on 20 March 2012 just hours after entering Liberty following the mandatory relocation and eviction of the third convoy of residents from Ashraf to Liberty, taking place on the eve of the Iranian New Year under the pressures of the Iraqi government and Mr. Martin Kobler’s insistence. Iraqi physicians declared the cause of his death as lack of sleep and extreme pressure and fatigue. For 48 hours straight he was busy packing and inspecting for the transfer from Ashraf to Liberty.
The report of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention issued on 27-31 August 2012, and the UNHCR statement dating 13 December 2012, emphasize Camp Liberty residents’ rights as asylum seekers under international protection. Expressing my support for the rights of these Iranian refugees and my abhorrence about the pressures and medical siege imposed by the Iraqi government, I am requesting that you call on the Iraqi government in the most stringent terms to end the illegal and inhumane medical siege on Liberty residents and to allow them, like all Iraqi civilians, to have open access to medical services.
Yours sincerely,
Sir Richard Roberts Ph.D., F.R.S.
1993 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine
Chief Scientific Officer, New England Biolabs