Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on Feb. 11th, 2014

[Col Wesley Martin]

They always cite the Battle of Karbala back in 680 A.D. The reality is that we take it right up to the 20th century. Iraq was artificially formed as was Syria. We just started drawing straight-line borders and compiling countries together and putting the minority in power. Saddam Hussein was in the minority, yet he had the majority. There was long-term hostility.

We see just the opposite over in Syria. If we had tried to figure out how to make that world as hideous as what the people are having to face, we couldn't have done it any better. In 1953 we had the CIA support the overthrow of a popular government in Iran. We backed Nouri al-Maliki instead of Allawi. If Allawi were in charge of Iraq right now, you would not have the problem. Yet the United States ended up supporting Maliki, stealing the government from Allawi when Grand Ayatollah Sistani told Allawi to follow the constitution. Now Maliki is getting ready to steal the government again and that's why it's important he gets all this genocide done before April, because Maliki is going to stay in power, and the United States is going to support him. We saw the fiasco in Syria recently. We couldn't have handled that one more wrongly if we tried.

[Gary Schellenberger, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

There's just one other thing. A lot of people don't understand the plight of these folks in these camps. It seems they have taken a back seat. I'm on this committee and if I weren't on this committee, I probably would not know of Camp Ashraf or Camp Liberty. Is there a way we can make more public to more people around the world the terrible situation these people are in?

[Col Wesley Martin]

I totally agree with you. I keep hitting the point that in America if Kim Kardashian comes out in a new dress, it's all over the media, yet 52 people were murdered at Camp Ashraf and we hear very little about it and it's suppressed continually. Unfortunately, in America, in the United States, our media does not want to cover certain things, and unfortunately our state department has gotten away with a lot of lying.

In October we sent a letter to President Obama. It was responded to in December by Tony Blinken. The signatories on the letter were people like FBI Director Louis Freeh, Mayor Rudy Giuliani...[Technical Difficulty—Editor]...Governor Ed Rendell.... What we got back was a massive amount of lies. In January I took that letter apart, and Governor Ed Rendell sent it back to Tony Blinken.

In the room we're in now there are a couple of copies of the letter, and I'm willing to send it. Shiran has the letter. He's in the back of the room. I'm also willing to send it to...[Technical Difficulty—Editor]...and to show the problems. The media will not engage, for some reason. I can't figure out why. Even Rudy Giuliani, who is out there fighting for this issue, gets minimal response.

[Jared Genser]

If I might just add, one of the challenges is created by the way the Iraqi government is handling this. The residents are denied all visitors. There are no people who can visit them except for a rare U.S. government official and a rare UN official. They're able to communicate by telephone, via Skype, but basically that's about it. There are only a small number of Internet connections there.

To me, it's outrageous what's going on in Camp Liberty. It's outrageous. Whoever in world has heard of someone having to pay for their own imprisonment? This is what these people are doing. They're paying millions of dollars a year, funded by the NCRI, to actually pay for all the fuel, to pay and cater food to be brought to them, and otherwise.

I've never heard of such a thing. Even in the worst prisons in the world, you'll get scraps of food that aren't very good and you're not going to be in great condition, but you don't have to buy your own food. Maybe there are a few exceptions to that, but to me, it's outrageous what's going on.

The other thing is that the international community....This issue, as was noted before by your colleague, has been so politicized that when I met recently with UNHCR in Geneva, they tried to argue that the people in Camp Liberty were not actually detained. That was their argument. They said they were in a temporary transit location. I drew a picture on a page. It's a square. Can they leave? Can they leave whenever they want? No.

The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has said that they're detained in violation of international law. This is a body of the Human Rights Council. Will we disagree with that assessment? I'm like, “Well, if this isn't a prison, then what is a prison?” It has four walls. It has guards on all the towers, and people cannot come and go as they see fit. That is the classic definition of arbitrary detention under international law.

They've been given no due process of law. They've been charged with no crime. There's been no indictment. There's been no presentation to a court, to a judge. No ability to have a defence counsel challenge the claimed offences that they may have committed. None of that.

Yet even UNHCR itself says that they're not detained. So if you're in a situation where you have UNHCR, which is supposed to be a humanitarian body, not a political body, for political reasons rendering judgments like that, getting attention to the issues becomes all the more challenging because when people hear UNHCR's reports on Capitol Hill or in other parliaments—when I talk to people—they come across as reasonable, and people are used to being able to rely on UNHCR for good information.

It is a major challenge, not only to get attention to this kind of suffering, given the world that we live in, but also because unfortunately there is some complicity in the international community and UN agencies in turning a blind eye and/or lying about what's actually going on.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

We'll go now to Professor Cotler.

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I want to begin by commending both our witnesses. I'll be putting a question to Jared Genser. I thought your independent report on what happened on September 13 should be required reading. It is the most comprehensive study that I've seen in these matters.

Let me just go to one matter that you mentioned in response to a question, and that is with regard to the seven who were abducted on the occasion of the September massacre. Do we know why these residents were abducted? Do we know if they were specifically targeted? You mentioned that there's some information that they may be in Iran. What can the international community do to discover their whereabouts and to secure their safety?

[Jared Genser]

Thank you, Professor Cotler, for the very pointed question, because we looked at the September massacre in great detail, but one can't forget that seven people were disappeared by Iraqi security forces and that they may well be in Tehran.

The intelligence is very spotty. The UN itself had publicly said that it was believed they were being held in security facilities near Baghdad. When the UN itself says that...that's just what UNAMI said, it sort of makes you wonder how it is that, on the one hand, everyone is saying that the Iraqi government wasn't involved, yet somehow these people are known to the UN as being detained somewhere near Baghdad in an Iraqi security facility.

In any event, they were targeted, it's my understanding, because of who they were: a number of key leaders left behind. They were likely on a list of people who were of particular concern to Tehran and that Tehran wanted to get their hands on. It's unclear where they are now.

Sadly, calls on the Government of Iraq to produce them or to determine their whereabouts have had no meaningful response. Ultimately, unless the international community is willing to hold Nouri al-Maliki's feet to the fire on these issues rather than give him a free pass, the idea that the Iraqis will have any incentive to cooperate is I think misguided.

Let me just briefly note that on the day we released our report—the timing of the release of our report in November was not accidental—it was the same day Nouri al-Maliki arrived in Washington to meet with President Obama. The state department spokesperson was asked on that very day for reaction to the report put out by this German NGO, this investigation into the massacre in Camp Ashraf. The response of the spokesperson of the state department was astounding. I'm not going to quote from it precisely, but I'll let you know the one piece I am quoting precisely. Roughly speaking, he said, they'd looked at this issue “very, very, very closely”—three verys—and there was no evidence that they'd been able to determine “that the Iraqi government was in any way involved”.

Now, given that it was a camp of 1,300 guards inside, outside, and around the camp, and given Colonel Martin's testimony, having lived there and worked there, working closely with the Iraqis when he was there, explaining where it is in reference to the rest of Iraq and how it's impossible, and would have been impossible, for someone to have 100 commandos come into this, let alone all the other testimony we had, for the U.S. to make this claim publicly out of the state department the day that Nouri al-Maliki is in Washington is, to me, a licence for impunity.

If the U.S. government isn't going to hold him to account for what took place at Camp Ashraf, which was the commission of crimes against humanity, then why should he or Tehran conclude that they should be even remotely worried about producing the whereabouts of these seven people, let alone reappearing them?

To my mind, it really comes back again to the willingness of the United States and other members of the international community to not believe that there are higher priorities than the humanitarian imperative of saving human lives, and to not think that somehow, by doing a deal with someone like Nouri al-Maliki, there's no cost associated with that.

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

You mentioned in your recommendations that Canada should resettle 300 as part of the larger recommendation that only resettlement can guarantee their safety. But as Colonel Martin mentioned, Iran would like to keep them in the camp, and Iraq is doing the bidding of Iran.

How do we bring about the resettlement, and what about the U.S., which has a particular obligation on these matters?

[Jared Genser]

No, indeed. Look, the U.S. shouldn't have turned over responsibility for Camp Ashraf to the Iraqis in the first place. In fact, I wrote a memo back in late 2008 that I provided to the state department quoting public statements by the Iraqi Prime Minister and the national security adviser, and a range of statements from Tehran, about how they were going to crush, destroy, kill, and otherwise imprison the residents.

You're only legally allowed to hand over responsibility from one party to the Fourth Geneva Convention to another party—which Iraq is—to the Fourth Geneva Convention if you are confident that this party will respect the rights provided to civilians protected in a time of war under the Fourth Geneva Convention. The U.S. knew those requirements were not going to be met by the Iraqis, yet we turned over that responsibility.

I do think if Canada were to step forward and set an example for the rest of the world, even to start with 100 or with a symbolic number of 50 or something like that, it would say that we hear this whole argument about IPNs. We'll go do our own individual assessment. We'll announce that we'll take 50, or we'll announce that we'll take 100. We'll send our own security people to interview them thoroughly. You all can consult with the United States...which, by the way, had seven intelligence agencies and security agencies interview each of these residents when they were in Camp Ashraf in the first place. Presumably with intelligence sharing being what it is between the United States and Canada, you could receive the files of these people and the assessments that were done by U.S. intelligence as well.

Making that announcement publicly would, in my view, force Nouri al-Maliki to let that number go. Given his public claims that he wants them to be resettled, if you call him out on that claim and say, “We're trying to resettle them, but Nouri al-Maliki is blocking us from receiving them”, then that is a pretty hard position for most of the world to be able to defend.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

We go now to Mr. Sweet.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Genser, for your great work.

Colonel Martin, it's good to see you again. I wish we could see each other in better circumstances than what we normally see each other under.

Can you just give us an idea of the size of Camp Liberty right now?

[Col Wesley Martin]

Yes, sir. Camp Liberty, when it was originally built by the Americans, was miles by miles. Now we're talking about less than half a square mile total. It's probably more like half a square mile one way by three-eights or a quarter of a mile the other way.

That camp, when it was built by us—and I was there at the time, I used to live on Liberty when I was the ops chief of the operation—was built only to house us at night when we were off-duty, not the...[Technical difficulty--Editor]...hours a day that we were working. That's all it was designed for. Now you have over 2,900 people living in almost the size of a postage stamp, and they're not going anywhere else to work. They're stuck right there in what I would say is half a square mile at the most.

When Martin Kobler, UN ambassador, promised.... He was making the MeK think they had all of Camp Liberty. Instead, they got compressed further and further down. That's why these rocket attacks have been so effective.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

To be clear, Mr. Genser's testimony was that there are 1,300 Iraqi guards that surround this small camp. Is that what I heard earlier?

[Jared Genser]

No, that was surrounding Camp Ashraf originally, which had also been winnowed back in size. But, yes, there were 1,300 around Camp Ashraf at the time the massacre took place.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

What is the security size now around Liberty, does anybody know?

[Col Wesley Martin]

I can go ahead and add clarification.

The 1,300 at Ashraf not only involve security, but Maliki had put those there in case he had to go to war with Barzani up in Kurdistan. But it is true; there were 1,300 people able to respond should one of the MeK try to escape from Camp Ashraf or they do anything.

Camp Liberty is one of a compound of many camps. You're talking at least 10,000 people in that immediate area. You have what we call Camp Victory by the Al Faw Palace Lake, you had Camp Slayer, Camp Cropper, the list just kept going on, so you're talking well over 10,000 in that immediate area.

[Jared Genser]

But it's also worth noting—and, again, Colonel Martin, feel free to jump in because this is your expertise, I'm speaking a little out of my depth, but I know these facts to be accurate. There are five security checkpoints—this is in the Red Zone in Iraq, right outside of Baghdad—to get, ultimately, to Camp Liberty right now. The idea that a group of militants could put a massive truck-mounted rocket launcher together onto the back of a truck, drive it to within two miles—two to three miles away is where it's believed that these rockets are being launched from—launch 20 or 30 rockets and escape undetected in such a heavily fortified area, with 10,000 Iraqi soldiers and personnel, is, shall we say, unimaginable. The fact that there have been now multiple rocket attacks at this camp, and not a single person has ever been captured or killed conducting these attacks, I think speaks volumes to the Iraqi government's involvement.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Well, you've clarified what I wanted because—

[Col Wesley Martin]

Let me add—

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Just a moment, Colonel, and I'll let you add.

Politics is always sometimes very bizarre. I can of course get my head around Maliki's motivation, but the state department making the very, very closed comment that they made is so absurd. I'm just wondering what that motivation would be. I can understand the other motivation.

Go ahead, Colonel.

[Col Wesley Martin]

Sir, I will go ahead and send Sonia the letter I was referencing. It will be beyond bizarre when you see the comments that he tried to make back to us.

Interestingly, what was also mentioned is that nobody's been arrested, but every time there's been such an attack, the United States and UN immediately call on Maliki to do the investigation. As I've said in this letter and other reports, as corrupt and as backward as the Chicago Police Department was in the 1920s, nobody called on Al Capone to investigate the Saint Valentine's Day massacre, yet that's exactly what we're doing here.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

I know my time's running out. UNHCR, do they have people on the ground on a daily basis now in Camp Liberty?

[Jared Genser]

They don't ever come inside Camp Liberty. They come to the border.

This is one of the things that the residents have been promised, 24-7 monitoring at Camp Liberty, which hasn't existed. It's now being interpreted by the UN to say that you could reach somebody on a telephone 24-7, but of course they can't. In the middle of the night people don't pick up the phone, so this is what's happened with some of these rocket attacks. But UNHCR personnel come to the camp to then meet a person there and go to a facility about two miles away to interview the residents one at a time.

What the residents have argued repeatedly is that they need a permanent presence of even a single UN person in the camp. Because if there was a 24-hour presence then al-Maliki and others involved would think twice about launching rockets at it for fear that they'd kill a member of the UN personnel, which would be very problematic. But there has been no willingness on the part of the UN or the international community to push for a permanent in-camp presence of UN personnel at Camp Liberty .

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

I can feel my time draining away, but, Mr. Chair, I just want to say that again, if my colleagues are willing, I would love to have a representative from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees here to answer these allegations to us directly.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

We'll discuss that separately if we can.

Mr. Benskin, please.