The United States Senate must use its power to force Iraq to stop mistreating the Iranian dissidents in Camp Liberty, prominent American lawyer Alan Dershowitz has told a meeting in Washington DC.
The US was also to blame for exposing the camp’s residents to ‘violence, death and injury’, and for failing to prevent the massacre of 52 refugees in Camp Ashraf in September last year, he told a gathering at the US Senate.
Mr Dershowitz said: “Don’t wait for the courts, don’t wait for the White House, you are an independent branch of our government, you have the power to condition continuing aid to Iraq on making them behave like civilized people towards this group of brave refugees.
“You have the power, you have the power to enforce a life and death contract that the United State government made with the residents of Camp Ashraf that in exchange for giving up their inherent right to defend themselves and their families, they gave up that right in exchange for a promise of protection.
“We have not protected them, instead we have exposed to violence, to death, to injury. 52 murdered in cold blood, total of 116 killed, hundreds more wounded, seven hostages taken, nearly 3000 vulnerable to further attack.”
He added: “There is no good reason for why the United States has not kept its promise, there aren’t even bad reasons, but we haven’t been told what the reasons are. Instead we get silence, we get excuses from people who can’t justify their action.
“This is not a collateral issue, this is not a political peripheral issue, this is a central issue, morally, politically, and legally, please do justice.”
Iran Liberty 