Former foes Iraq and Iran sign extradition accord

Iran and Iraq have signed an accord to extradite “convicts and criminals” wanted by the two neighbors, Iranian state television’s website and newspapers reported on Monday.

Justice Minister Morteza Bakhtiari and his visiting Iraqi counterpart Hassan al-Shammari signed the agreement late on Sunday, Aftab-e Yazd newspaper said.

According to state television’s website, the agreement will allow the “repatriation of convicts and criminals, including those who have fled their country to stand trial and await implementation of their sentence.”

Soon after the deal was signed, speculation emerged that the agreement could lead to the forced repatriation of an Iranian opposition group based in Iraq.

Baghdad has however denied the deal would be used to repatriate the exiled group.

“They are not detainees or prisoners. This agreement is to trade criminals between the two countries,” Iraqi Deputy Justice Minister Busho Ibrahim said.

“It is a judicial cooperation agreement. The other (Ashraf) is a case of refugees, while this agreement concerns criminals,” Mr. Ibrahim said.

Iran’s state TV said there are 302 Iranians in Iraqi prisons and 184 Iraqi nationals in Iranian prisons.

The accord follows a deadly raid on April 8 by Iraqi security forces on Camp Ashraf, set up in the 1980s and which houses about 3,500 members of Iran’s main armed opposition group, the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran (PMOI), and their families.

The raid inside Iraq near the border with Iran killed 34 members of the group, which fought alongside Iraqi forces against the Islamic republic in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war and figures on the US government’s terrorist list. Tehran also considers the group a terrorist threat, and has urged their expulsion from Iraq.

Former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein gave the PMOI refuge in Iraq in the 1980s and some of its fighters joined him in the 1980-1988 war against Iran. The group surrendered its weapons to US forces after the 2003 invasion that ousted Mr. Hussein.

Iran’s judiciary chief, Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani, who oversaw the signing of the agreement, lauded the Iraqi government’s measures against the Mujahedeen, the television website said.

But Mr. Larijani did not specify if Iran would use the agreement to ask for the extradition of Mujahedeen members.

Quoted by Iran’s official IRNA news agency, Mr. Shammari said Baghdad was determined to expel the group from the camp.

On April 11, Iraq asked the exiled group to leave the country by the end of this year.

Iraq’s population is 31.5 million while Iran’s population is under 73 million.

Camp Ashraf has become a mounting problem for Iraqi authorities amid pressure from Tehran to hand over the members of the militant group.

The left-wing, Islamist group was founded in 1965 to oppose the Shah of Iran but it fell out with the clerical regime in Tehran that took power in the 1979 Islamic revolution.

The camp’s fate has been in question since the US military turned it over to Baghdad in 2009 under a bilateral security agreement. Baghdad has said Ashraf residents would be given until year-end to leave the country.

(Sara Ghasemilee of Al Arabiya can be reached at: sara.ghasemilee@mbc.net.)