Lawyer: Clinton to decide Iranian exiles’ fate after they move

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will decide on removing an Iranian dissident group from the U.S. list of foreign terror groups only after all its members have left a camp north of Baghdad, a Justice Department lawyer told a federal court Tuesday.

Robert Loeb, who is representing Mrs. Clinton, offered to provide the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit periodic progress reports on moving the Iranian exiles from their present home at Camp Ashraf to Camp Liberty, a former U.S. military base near Baghdad's international airport.

About 2,000 of Camp Ashraf’s more than 3,000 residents, who belong to the dissident group Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), have been transferred so far to Camp Liberty under a deal brokered by the United Nations.

Mrs. Clinton will decide on removing the MEK from the list no later than 60 days after Camp Ashraf has been vacated, and data gathered from the relocation has been studied to verify the group’s claims that it is not a terror group, Mr. Loeb said.

When Judge David Tatel asked how much time the secretary would need to make a decision, Mr. Loeb replied that it was hard to give an exact date.

Viet Dinh, who represented the MEK at the hearing, accused Mrs. Clinton of “indifference and lassitude” toward the group. Every day that the MEK remains on the terror list is a violation of its rights, he said.

“Any decision [by Mrs. Clinton] would be better than the current state of deprivation, even a denial,” he said.

A denial of the MEK’s request would allow the appeals process to move forward.

However, Mr. Loeb said that a denial also could negatively affect the group’s cooperation during the move to Camp Liberty.

In July 2010, the court ordered the State Department to review its 1997 designation of the MEK as a terrorist organization.

“This court’s mandate is being ignored,” said Mr. Dinh.

But Judge Karen Henderson said the court had not set a deadline by which it expects the State Department to act.

“They have said that this is complicated by the move from [Camp Ashraf] … It’s not as if they are just sitting on their hands,” she said.

The MEK, also known as People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, was responsible for terrorist attacks in Iran in the 1970s that killed several U.S. military personnel and civilians, according to the State Department.

Camp Ashraf’s residents surrendered their weapons in 2003 as part of a cease-fire agreement with U.S. forces.

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