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Last batch of Iranian exiles moves to Albania

Xinhua, September 11, 2016 Adjust font size:

The last batch of members of an exile Iranian opposition group left their camp near Baghdad international airport to be resettled in Albania, the Iraqi government said on Saturday.

"The Iraqi government completely ended the presence of the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) on the Iraqi land, and managed to close this file," a statement by the office of the Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said.

All members of the PMOI are reportedly to have left on Friday, when the last 280-member batch was transferred from their residence in Camp Liberty, or Hurriyah Camp, near the airport, to the Republic of Albania, the statement said.

The deportation of the Iranian exiled group was conducted in cooperation with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), it added.

The Iranian exiles have been relocated several years ago under the supervision of the United Nations mission in Iraq from their former base Camp Ashraf near in Iraq's eastern province of Diyala to Camp Liberty in Baghdad, which was a former U.S. military base.

In late 2011, the Iraqi government and the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq struck a deal to move the camp residents from Diyala to Baghdad temporarily until the UNHCR gets them resettled in a third country.

Iraqi Shiite militias, backed by Iran, repeatedly attacked Camp Ashraf and later Camp Liberty with mortar and rocket barrages, killing and wounding dozens.

The UN had therefore frequently urged the international community to speed up its efforts to resettle the Iranian exiles in third countries.

The PMOI was founded in 1965 in opposition to the shah of Iran and subsequently fought to oust the Islamic regime which took power in the 1979 revolution.

The group fled to Iraq in 1986, and got permission from Iran's foe Saddam Hussein to set up Camp Ashraf in Iraq's eastern province of Diyala near the Iranian border.

After the PMOI fighters were disarmed following the U.S.-led invasion in Iraq in 2003, the camp remained under the protection of the U.S. military police for five years before the Iraqi government took over the security responsibility in the camp. Endit