400 Iran exiles reluctantly move to new Iraq home

Lugging clothes, tables and whatever else they could carry, roughly 400 members of an Iranian exile group reluctantly moved Saturday from their camp in northwestern Iraq to a deserted military base outside the capital in what they called a show of good faith that they eventually will be allowed to leave the country peacefully.          

It was the first group to move of the more than 3,300 members of the People's Mujahedeen Organization of Iran who have lived at Camp Ashraf for three decades.              

They left under pressure from the Iraqi government, whose army stormed Ashraf last April in a raid that left 34 of the exiles dead. The United Nations also wants the exiles to move to the Camp Liberty military base outside Baghdad, where they can be screened for asylum eligibility and, presumably, better protected.           

The process of moving the exiles to the new location has proceeded in fits and starts over recent months. Iraqi soldiers searched the exiles for almost an entire day before they left Ashraf, and they were being searched again Saturday morning before they were allowed into Liberty.         

Members were reluctant to leave their home, which they turned into a miniature city with parks and a university, in favor of an abandoned military base. Some in the group had not strayed outside for years.   

AP