Alan Dershowitz: We must act now to protect Camp Ashraf residents

NCRI - Speaking in a conference in Washington DC on November 19,2011 renowned lawyer and rights activists Professor Alan Dershowitz called on United States and United Nations "to act now to protect" the "3400 vulnerable individuals" in Camp Ashraf, Iraq. He warned that Iranian regime, is "planning the mass killing of the largest concentration of witnesses to their crimes in the world today, those who are living in Camp Ashraf in Iraq: 3,400 unarmed Iranian dissidents."

Referring to the scheduled visit by Nouri al-Maliki on December 12 to the White House, he said: "If the President of the United States does not demand a change in the Iraqi government’s commitment to close the camp [by end of 2011], his silence will be taken as acquiescence, and that is so dangerous, silent acquiescence."

Dershowitz said: " After the Second World War we said Never Again. But you know what’s happened to never Never Again? It’s become again and again and again. This time we must keep our collective humanitarian promise. The world is now on notice, it has no excuse. When the holocaust happened, everybody said we didn’t know. When the Armenian genocide occurred, we didn’t know, when Cambodian genocides were occurring, people were telling us it was propaganda, we didn’t know. Rwanda Darfur, we didn’t know. We know. We have been told. We have been warned.

He warned that " The conscience of the world has been pricked. We know, we are on notice, we must act now to protect these 3,400 vulnerable individuals. If we fail to do so, the blood of innocents will be on our collective hands and there are specific lifesaving steps our government can take immediately."

"We said after the Second World War never again. But you know what’s happened to never again? It’s become again and again and again. This time we must keep our collective humanitarian promise. The world is now on notice, it has no excuse. When the holocaust happened, everybody said we didn’t know. When the Armenian genocide occurred, we didn’t know, when Cambodian genocides were occurring, people were telling us it was propaganda, we didn’t know. Rwanda Darfur, we didn’t know. We know. We have been told. We have been warned. The conscience of the world has been pricked. We know, we are on notice, we must act now to protect these 3,400 vulnerable individuals.

"If we fail to do so, the blood of innocents will be on our collective hands and there are specific lifesaving steps our government can take immediately.

"We should appoint a special envoy to lead to efforts to peacefully resolve this matter. We should call publically on the Iraqi government to remove the December 31st deadline. We should do that before Maliki comes to the United States. We should take the matter to the UN Security Council for binding decision to prevent the human catastrophe and we should do it immediately. The State Department should act immediately to eliminate this horrible excuse that’s being used by the Iraqi regime, by removing MEK from its list of foreign terrorist organizations and the United States, ... So there is no time to wait; the clock of death is ticking. If not now, when? "