Iran Rebels Resist Leaving Iraq, Fear For Future

Ashraf is run military-style, with separate dormitories for men and women, but residents say their pursuits are peaceful.

 Iranian opposition exiles informed that they are no longer welcome in Iraq say they will not go willingly and intend to use legal means to fight any attempt to drive them out by force.

"If I will go back, I will face torture and execution," Farhad Eshradhy, 51, told Reuters from Camp Ashraf, the base of exiled guerrillas from the People's Mujahideen of Iran (PMOI).

"The position of the Iraqi government, it is entirely illegal," he said by telephone. "If they are going (to close the camp) by force, there is going to be legal reaction."

The fate of 3,500 Camp Ashraf residents, most of whom have been living there or in similar camps for 20 years, has been in question since Iraq took over Ashraf from U.S. forces this year.

Iraq's Shi'ite leaders, friendly with Tehran, want it closed within two months, but say it will not be done by force.

Human rights groups say closing Ashraf and driving residents out against their will would violate international human rights law. They see it as a test of whether Iraq can meet its legal obligations as a member of the international community.

Iraq's national security adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie met diplomats from 12 Western countries on Tuesday to plead for them to take in hundreds of rebels from the camp north of Baghdad.

"We want to close all the files with our neighbours, and our eastern neighbour Iran sees this as a threat to their national security," he told envoys from the United States, Canada, Australia and nine EU countries.

He said 35 camp residents have Western citizenship and 914 have acquired refugee status abroad. He asked diplomats to take in those 949 plus others with family ties to their countries.

"You have helped us a great deal in liberating Iraq. Now we need to clear up some of what we have unwillingly inherited from the previous regime," he said.

FELL OUT WITH CLERICS

The PMOI began as a group of Islamist leftists opposed to Iran's late Shah but fell out with Shi'ite clerics who took power after the 1979 revolution. Many fought alongside Saddam Hussein against Iran.

The group surrendered its weaponry to U.S. forces after the 2003 invasion of Iraq but its presence remains a source of friction between Baghdad, Washington and Tehran.

In a major diplomatic victory for the rebels, the European Union decided on Monday to remove the PMOI from its list of terrorist organisations. The United States, Iraq and Iran all officially still consider it a terrorist group.

"Our constitution is clear that no terrorist organisation can stay in Iraq to threaten our neighbours," Rubaie said.

He said Iraq has no refugee law, and the Iranians cannot therefore stay in Iraq as refugees.

Asked by a Canadian diplomat when Iraq would shut the camp, he gave no firm timetable but said: "They are a cult, a religious cult. They are brainwashed and they are controlled by a small group of people. We need to detoxify them."

Camp resident Behzad Saffari called such accusations "psychological warfare" by the Iranian leadership.

"Brainwashed? You can say that all of us are brainwashed: to fight for freedom and democracy in Iran," he told Reuters.

Ashraf is run military-style, with separate dormitories for men and women, but residents say their pursuits are peaceful.

"We have a university here. They are studying engineering. Some of them are studying literature or music," Eshradhy said.

An electrical engineer who studied at the University of Maryland, Eshradhy said he came to Iraq 22 years ago to join the fight against the clerical regime in his homeland -- and has no place else to go.

"It's the minimum right of me to be considered a refugee."