Word: camped
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Camp Ashraf, some 40 miles north of Baghdad, is the base for the controversial People's Mujahedin Organization of Iran, also known as the MEK. A formerly-armed group that critics say resembles a cult, the MEK helped overturn the Shah in 1979, but in the '80s clashed with former Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini and fled Iran. Saddam Hussein let the exiles set up bases in Iraq - Camp Ashraf is the last standing - and gave the group arms and training to help him fight his war with Iran...
After the fall of Saddam in 2003, U.S. forces were protecting Camp Ashraf's approximately 3,400 inhabitants as part of an agreement in which the MEK traded in their arms in exchange for "protected persons" status under the Geneva Convention. (The U.S. considers the MEK a terrorist organization, though it has reportedly tapped the group for intelligence on Iran's nuclear program). But ever since the U.S. handed sovereignty back to the Iraqis in June, Camp Ashraf no longer feels like a safe haven. On July 28, clashes between camp dwellers and Iraqi forces left 11 Iranians dead, scores...
...appease Iran's ayatullahs, who consider MEK members terrorists. "This situation was predictable the day Saddam's regime fell," says Karim Pakzad, a Middle East expert at Paris' Institute of Strategic and International Relations (IRIS). "It's understandable that the Iraqis want to extend their sovereignty to a camp of former militants, whose presence they can no longer stand. But it's also become a humanitarian question: what to do with these people...
Since the raid, women from the camp have written letters to the U.N. claiming the Iraqi forces threatened them with rape. Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have called for an investigation of excessive use of force, while an Iraqi court has ordered the prisoners' release. But the Iraqi government has kept them locked up, saying the violence only broke out after the dissidents refused to let the police establish a base at the camp...
...Relatives of those living in the camp fear repeat violence, and say the camp's food, water and medical supplies have recently become severely limited. Samer Muscati, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, hopes the bloodshed is not a sign of things to come in Iraq: "Civilians have to be given basic human rights considerations, whether or not they're protected under an agreement...