Iraq seeks arrest of Iranian exiles

An Iraqi court ordered the arrest of 39 members of an exiled Iranian opposition group, accusing them of crimes against humanity in helping Saddam Hussein to crush a revolt almost two decades ago, a judge said yesterday.
The 39 are members of the People's Mujahideen Organisation of Iran (PMOI), a guerrilla movement opposed to the Iranian government. It sided with the toppled Iraqi dictator, a Sunni Muslim, during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s but has denied helping Saddam to crack down on long-oppressed majority Shia and ethnic Kurds.
Iran, Iraq and the United States consider the PMOI a terrorist organisation and the now Shia-led Iraqi government has been trying to get it to vacate a base north of Baghdad where around 3,500 of its members have lived for 20 years.
"An arrest warrant has been issued against 39 leaders and members of the organisation including the PMOI's head Massoud Rajavi, due to evidence that confirms they committed crimes against humanity," said Judge Mohammed Abdul-Sahib, a spokesman of the Iraqi High Tribunal.
Rajavi's wife Maryam, leader of the French-based National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the PMOI's political wing, was also included in the warrant, Abdul Sahib added.
“The 39 Iranian suspects were involved with the former Iraqi security forces in suppressing the 1991 (Shia) uprising against the former Iraqi regime and the killing of Iraqi citizens," he said.
The PMOI began as an Islamist leftist group opposed to Iran's late Shah, but fell out with Shia who took power after the 1979 revolution.