UPI ,Camp Ashraf, Iraq, 06 June 2009 — Iranian dissidents living in Iraq were involved in a dangerous standoff with Iraqi police Friday, according to representatives of the opposition group.

Some 3,400 members of the opposition People’s Mujahedin of Iran are living at the Camp Ashraf enclave in Diyala province under the protection of the Iraqi army.
In a media statement, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, an umbrella organization representing the PMOI, claims some 100 Iraqi riot police amassed in front of Ashraf Friday, threatening to use violence if the camp’s citizens do not let them in.
People there have blocked the gate, “because they are afraid of forced deportations to Iran,” Javad Dabiran, a spokesman of the NCRI, told United Press International Friday. “The situation there could very easily escalate.”
In Iran, PMOI members are seen as terrorists, and they would likely face torture, ill-treatment or even the death penalty, aid groups have warned.
The Iranian opposition says that Baghdad clamps down on the camp because of political pressure from Tehran. Baghdad denies this.
A group of German lawmakers Friday sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, calling for Washington’s help to stabilize Ashraf.
Maryam Rajavi, the so-called president-elect of the Iranian resistance, recently sent letters to U.S. President Barack Obama and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon calling for their personal intervention to prevent a “humanitarian catastrophe desired by the Iranian regime.”
Camp Ashraf and its citizens have long been an issue of friction between Tehran and Baghdad, with allegations of wrongdoing from both sides.
The PMOI was founded in 1965 in opposition to the shah but was squashed by the mullah regime that took power in 1979. It remains one of the main opposition groups to the current regime in Tehran and is considered a terror organization by the United States.
The PMOI in Camp Ashraf, however, disarmed in 2003. The European Union removed the group from its terrorist list in January after Britain had done so last year.