UN transfers 71 MKO terrorists to Albania

A UN official says 71 members of the terrorist Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) have been transferred from Iraq to Albania following a rocket attack on Camp Liberty.

The attack on Camp Liberty a week ago has “once again shown how important it is to relocate the residents to third countries as quickly as possible,” UN special envoy to Iraq Martin Kobler said in a statement.

“A total of 71 men and women now have safely arrived in Albania and have benefited from the government of Albania’s offer to accept 210 of the camp’s residents,” he said.

Kobler added that Germany had also proposed to accept around 100 MKO members.

On June 20, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki requested the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) to remove MKO terrorists from the country as soon as possible.

Reuters reported on June 14 that two MKO members were killed and more than 17 were wounded in a rocket attack on Camp Liberty in western Baghdad.

In another attack on Camp Liberty near the Iraqi capital on February 9, at least seven MKO members were killed and more than 50 others were wounded.

The MKO — listed as a terrorist organization by much of the international community — fled Iran in 1986 for Iraq, where it enjoyed the support of Iraq’s executed dictator Saddam Hussein, and set up its camp near the Iranian border.

The group is notorious for carrying out numerous terrorist acts against Iranian civilians and officials, involvement in the bloody repression of the 1991 Shia Muslims in southern Iraq, and the massacre of Iraqi Kurds in the country’s north under Saddam.

In December 2011, the United Nations and Baghdad agreed to relocate some 3,000 MKO members from Camp New Iraq, formerly known as Camp Ashraf, in Diyala Province to Camp Liberty — a former US military base near Baghdad International Airport.

Tehran has repeatedly called on the Iraqi government to expel the terrorist group, but the US has been blocking the expulsion by pressuring the Iraqi government.