Camp Ashraf is located northeast of the
Iraqi town of
Khalis, about 120 kilometers west of the
Iranian border and 60 kilometers north of
Baghdad in Iraq's
Diyala Governorate. This was the base of the PMOI during the attack. The camp was named in honor of
Ashraf Rajavi, a prominent political prisoner during the Shah's regime, who was later killed by the clerical regime on February 8, 1982. The PMOI is an
Iranian opposition group that seeks to overthrow Iran's theocratic regime. In 1997, Iran persuaded the Clinton Administration to designate the MEK as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) on the U.S. State Department's list with the expectation that this gesture would lead to the normalization of relations with Iranian officials. In 1986, the French government forced the PMOI to leave Paris, and their headquarters subsequently moved to Baghdad, Iraq, where they remained aligned with the country until the 2003
U.S. invasion of Iraq. In 2009, the U.S. military handed over control to the
Shi'a-dominated
Iraqi government, which repeatedly vowed to close the camp as then
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had reportedly been trying to bolster his country's ties with Iran. Iraq and Iran have designated the PMOI a
terrorist group, though not the
United States,
European Union or
United Nations. ==Raid==