Invited by Saddam: Iranian opposition members refuse to leave Iraq outpost

Mr. Madani and other MEK officials invite guests into a cool, white reception room and serve tea and cake while producing a wide variety of documents and letters that do little to alleviate the ambiguity over the camp's legal status.

Madani dismisses the issue of Iraqi law, which authorities say makes the MEK residents illegal foreigners in the country. Instead he cites the Geneva Conventions, under which the US military had recognized the MEK as noncombatants in the war and pledged to protect them.

"This is purely an agenda forced by the Iranian regime. Why do we have to give in to such a thing?" he says of the Iraqi government's plan to shut down the camp and move residents to a more remote location in Iraq as a prelude to leaving the country.

Iraqi National Security Advisor Muwaffaq al-Rubaie has a simple answer for them.

"They have to understand that the party is over for them," Mr. Rubaie told journalists recently, after refuting allegations from the MEK that their members were being mistreated. "They need to understand that they have to leave. This is not [the era of] Saddam Hussein using them against Iran. We will never use them against Iran."

Describing the residents as "brainwashed cult members from a high-trained terrorist organization," Rubaie says Iraq does not intend to forcibly deport them but "if they resist and carry out this engineered crisis there will be some pain."

The Iraqi government is pressuring other countries to take back about one-third of the camp residents with either foreign passports or travel documents. The rest will be given the Iranian passports they are entitled to and a plane ticket home.

Plenty of places to go, but this is home

The residents include Americans, Canadians, Swedes, and Dutch. Rubaei says another 309 could legally return to France, where the MEK is based. While the US lists the group as a terrorist organization, the European Union has dropped that designation. As individuals, MEK members are also free to return to the US unless there are specific arrest warrants for them.

After 2003, the US military seized the MEK's tanks and other weapons and confined its residents to the isolated base. All of the camp residents renounced violence and underwent background screening by US authorities.

MEK members argue that their cooperation entitles them to stay.

"We used our own money to build this, to plant every single tree and plant in this place," Madani says bitterly, driving past parks and streets punctuated with giant sculptures of tulips and birds. "This is their home. There are cemeteries, people who have died here, they are buried here, they have lived here.'

Outside the museum dedicated to Iranian atrocities, Kiamanesh sits with her friend, Gohar Mohajeri, on a walkway planted with flowers. Ms. Mohajeri was born in New York but grew up in Germany. She has never been to Iran.

"For outsiders, when they don't know what our goal and aim is, obviously our life is abnormal for them," says Mohajeri. Kiamanesh translates for her from Farsi.

Neither seem to realize how isolated they are at the camp. "I do believe this is the greenest place in all of Iraq," says Kiamanesh, a former law student who without a headscarf would look like the girl next door. "Why would anyone ever want to leave this place?"

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