Iraq: Maliki's forces bar Camp Liberty Iranians from attending burials of relatives

               
  MARYAM RAJAVI, PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE IRANIAN RESISTANCE HOLDS PHOTOS OF FOUR PMOI (MEK) 
                    MEMBERS KILLED IN DECEMBER 26, 2014 MISSILE ATTACK ON CAMP LIBERTY, IRAQ.

NCRI - The Iraqi forces of Nouri al-Maliki denied the family members of four Camp Liberty residents the right to attend the burials of four dissidents killed eight months ago. The four were finally buried on Monday August 18, following extensive efforts by the residents.

On December 26, 2013, when a barrage of missiles hit Camp Liberty, home to Iranian refugees in Iraq, killed four members of the Iranian opposition, the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK).

Over the past eight months, the committee at the Iraqi Prime Ministry tasked with suppressing residents of camps Ashraf and Liberty had rejected numerous demands made by the victims' friends and families to either hand over or bury the bodies of Mohammad Javad Saleh Tehrani, Mahmoud Bornafar, Abbas Namvar and Yahiya Ziarati.

During this period the residents, their representatives and lawyers pursued this issue with hundreds of phone calls, letters and other measures with officials of the United Nations, US government, Iraqi government and other international organizations in Baghdad, Geneva, Washington, New York and European capitals, all asking to receive the bodies and have them buried.

A statement by the Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran on 2 June, 2014, stated: “Over 50 referrals by the residents to the police headquarters in Camp Liberty, constant referrals of residents’ representatives and their legal advisers to UNAMI monitors, along with numerous letters by residents’ representatives and their lawyers to the United Nations, the US Embassy, and the Iraqi government have proved fruitless.”

After eight months, and contrary to Islamic rituals, the Iraqis finally agreed to allow the bodies to buried, but they did not allow even the friends and families of these martyrs to take part in the burial ceremony.

Only four camp residents were allowed to receive the bodies at the coroner’s office and were able to transfer them for burial.

The Iraqi forces also continued imposing harsh restrictions on the residents, who were forced to wait for hours in a filthy coroner’s office that lacked even the most basic hygiene standards while the bodies of the martyrs were located and transferred to a cemetery.

Meanwhile, the efforts of residents and their representatives to obtain an agreement to receive the body of PMOI member Mohammad Babaie, along with the four, was futile. Mohammad Babaie died on 28 April, 2014, in the inhumane medical siege imposed on Camp Liberty. The Iraqi forces continue to keep his body as a hostage.

This shows how the ominous shadow of the mullahs’ regime, the terrorist Quds Force, its chief Qassem Suleimani and its puppet prime minister in Iraq is an ever present burden in that country.

What is even more astonishing is that UNAMI human rights reports on Iraq and the periodic reports issued under the name of the United Nations Secretary-General make no reference to these inhumane measures.