Call on U.S., UN and human rights defending bodies for release of the seven hostages
NCRI – Following disclosure of the place of detention of seven Ashraf residents taken hostage and in fear of mounting international calls for their freedom, Maliki ordered their transfer from their prison in the Baghdad airport area.

Yesterday (Sunday, September 22), forces of the Dirty Division transferred the hostages from division’s prison in Baghdad airport area to an unknown location.

Maliki’s Security Advisor Faleh al-Fayyaz has ordered the hostages to be once again tortured and interrogated in the new location and after extraction of all their information and extraction of false confessions they be extradited to the religious fascism ruling Iran.

Taher Boumedra, official responsible for Ashraf file and Head of UNAMI’s Human Rights Office during the years 2009 to 2012, in a testimony at the UN headquarters in Geneva on September 19, 2013 said: “There is no way for [UNAMI and] the American embassy not to know where they are… When the 36 in 2009 were taken from Al Khalis they disappeared and I followed them where they were. They were in Baghdad in the Green Zone 50 meters away from UNAMI headquarters also 50 meters from Iraqi Presidency in a building with a label on it ‘High Council of National Education’ and the National Education was used as a secret prison. I went to visit them in the presence of the Iraqi security officers. I told them now you are my neighbors and I will visit you every day. Next day I went to visit them they were removed.”

The High Commissioner for Refugees stipulates that the seven are in Iraq (September 13); and Ms. Ashton, in her letter of September 19 writes that these people are being held near Baghdad and there is a significant risk that they could be sent to Iran.

Iranian Resistance is calling for immediate intervention by the U.S. government and the United Nations who bear direct responsibility for safety and security of the hostages. They are all ‘Protected Persons’ under the Fourth Geneva Convention, asylum-seekers, and ‘people of concern’ that enjoy international protection. Inaction would give the Iraqi government the opportunity to extradite the hostages to the religious fascism ruling Iran.

Iranian Resistance also calls on all human right defending bodies and institutions to join the campaign to free the hostages.

Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran

September 23, 2013