Tariq Aziz was an Iraqi politician who served as Deputy Prime Minister (1979–2003), Minister of Foreign Affairs (1983–1991) and a close advisor of President Saddam Hussein. Their association began in the 1950s when both were activists for the then-banned Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party. He was both an Arab nationalist and a member of the Chaldean Catholic Church.
The People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI), also known as Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) or Mojahedin-e-Khalq Organization (MKO), is an Iranian dissident organization that was previously armed but has now transitioned primarily into a political advocacy group. Its headquarters are currently in Albania. The group's ideology is rooted in "Islam with revolutionary Marxism", but after the Iranian Revolution became about overthrowing the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran and installing its own government. At one point the MEK was Iran's "largest and most active armed dissident group", and it is still sometimes presented by Western political backers as a major Iranian opposition group, but it is also deeply unpopular today within Iran, largely due to its siding with Iraq in the Iran–Iraq War.
Maryam Rajavi is an Iranian dissident politician and the leader of the People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK), an organization advocating the overthrow of the Iranian government, and president-elect of its National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI). She is married to Massoud Rajavi, who is the co-leader of MEK.
Starting on 19 July 1988 and continuing for approximately five months, a series of mass executions of political prisoners ordered by Ayatollah Khomeini and carried out by Iranian officials took place across Iran. Many prisoners were also tortured. The killings took place in at least 32 cities across the country. The killings were perpetrated without any legislative basis and trials were not concerned with establishing the guilt or innocence of defendants. Great care was taken to conceal the killings, and the government of Iran currently denies their occurrence.
International reactions to the 2006 Qana airstrike, which saw the greatest loss of civilian life in the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict, twenty eight deaths with thirteen missing, largely involved the condemnation of Israel by many countries around the globe, bringing about a supposed 48 hours cessation of air operations by the Israeli Air Force. Bombings resumed only a few hours after the start of the cessation of air operations.
On January 11, 2007, the United States military raided the Iranian Liaison Office in Erbil, Kurdistan Region, Iraq, ostensibly to detain two senior Iranian officials, but captured five mid-level diplomats instead. The U.S. government's position is that the office was used by the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a local headquarters. However, both Iranian and Kurdish officials state that it was a diplomatic mission in the city of Erbil.
The "kill or capture" strategy is a policy adopted in 2007 by the United States in Iraq to confront suspected Iranian operatives in Iraq. These Iranian operatives were accused of supplying various militias in Iraq with technical, financial, and material support so that they can carry out terrorist attacks against U.S.-led Coalition forces.
Gunmen kidnapped Jalal Sharafi, the second secretary of the Iranian embassy, as he drove through Karrada district in central Baghdad, Iraq on 6 February 2007. The gunmen wore uniforms of the Iraqi 36th Commando Battalion, a special Iraqi unit under United States direction. The U.S. military denied any involvement in the kidnapping. After his release on 3 April 2007, the diplomat claimed he was tortured by Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operatives. The U.S. government denies that they had involvement in the kidnapping and alleged torture of Sharafi.
Camp Ashraf or Ashraf City was a camp in Iraq's Diyala Governorate, having the character of a small city with all basic infrastructure, and headquarters of the People's Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI/MEK). The population used to be around 3,400 in 2012, but in 2013 nearly all were relocated to Camp Liberty near Baghdad International Airport after pressure by then-prime minister Nouri al-Maliki's office.
The 2008 Abu Kamal raid was an attack carried out by helicopter-borne CIA paramilitary officers from Special Activities Division and United States Special Operations Command, Joint Special Operations Command inside Syrian territory on October 26, 2008. The Syrian government called the event a "criminal and terrorist" attack on its sovereignty, alleging all of the reported eight fatalities were civilians. An unnamed U.S. military source, however, alleges that the target was a network of foreign fighters who planned to travel through Syria to join the Iraqi insurgency against the United States-led Coalition in Iraq and the Iraqi government.
Camp Liberty is a former installation of the United States Department of Defense in Baghdad, Iraq. The installation was used from 2012 to September 2016 to house members of the People's Mujahedin of Iran, who had been forcibly evicted from Camp Ashraf.
Reactions to the Gaza flotilla raid on 31 May 2010 ranged from fierce condemnation to strong support for Israel.
In the 2010 Baghdad church massacre, six suicide bombers of the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) militant group attacked a Syriac Catholic church in Baghdad during Sunday evening Mass, on 31 October, 2010, and began killing the worshipers. ISI was a militant group which aimed to overthrow the Iraqi federal government and establish an Islamic state in Iraq.
Events in the year 2011 in Iraq.
On April 8, 2011, the Iraqi Army launched a raid against the People's Mujahedin of Iran, an Iranian opposition group based at Camp Ashraf in Iraq's Diyala Governorate. While Iraqi authorities claimed that three people had been killed resisting a military operation at the camp, the UN said 34 people were killed and 318 injured in the raid. The attack was denounced as a "massacre" by PMOI leader Maryam Rajavi and U.S. Senator John Kerry.
The Houla massacre was a mass murder of civilians by Syrian government forces that took place on May 25, 2012, in the midst of the Syrian Civil War, in the town of Taldou, in the Houla Region of Syria, a string of towns northwest of Homs. According to the United Nations, 108 people were killed, including 34 women and 49 children. While a small proportion of the deaths appeared to have resulted from artillery and tank rounds used against Taldou, the U.N. later announced that most of the massacre's victims had been "summarily executed in two separate incidents". UN investigators have reported that some witnesses and survivors stated that the massacre was committed by pro-government Shabiha. In August 2012 UN investigators released a report which stated that it was likely that Syrian troops and Shabiha militia were responsible for the massacre, concluding that: "On the basis of available evidence, the commission has a reasonable basis to believe that the perpetrators of the deliberate killing of civilians, at both the Abdulrazzak and Al-Sayed family locations, were aligned to the Government. It rests this conclusion on its understanding of access to the crime sites, the loyalties of the victims, the security layout in the area including the position of the government’s water authority checkpoint and the consistent testimonies of victims and witnesses with direct knowledge of the events. This conclusion is bolstered by the lack of credible information supporting other possibilities."
Abdolreza Rajabi was a Kurdish Iranian, born in Mahidasht District, west of the Kermanshah Province. He died under suspicious circumstances in Reja'i Shahr Prison where he was being held as a political prisoner. His was one of at least seven deaths in custody in as many years that has raised questions about the state of human rights in Iran.
On 14 August 2013, the Egyptian police, under the command of then-Defense Minister Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, used lethal force to “disperse” two camps of protesters in Cairo: one at al-Nahda Square and a larger one at Rabaa al-Adawiya Square. The two sites had been occupied by supporters of President Mohamed Morsi, who had been removed from office by the military a little over a month earlier following mass protests against his rule. Initiatives to end the six-week sit-ins by peaceful means had failed, and the camps were cleared out within hours.
National reactions to the Gaza flotilla raid on 31 May 2010 ranged from support to strong condemnation of Israel. Those supporting Israel generally also expressed concern for the loss of life and injuries to civilians. Criticism included the death and injuries of civilians, the disproportionate response, and the execution of the raid.
People's Mujahedin of Iran 
