Relatives of around 5,000 Iranian anti-government insurgents who have been ordered to leave occupied Iraq have appealed to the United Nations to intervene to stop the expulsion going ahead.
A spokesman for the families said on Tuesday a protest by about 150 of them outside the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR's Geneva headquarters was part of a coordinated campaign in Western cities.
"Wherever they are sent, they will face extreme danger to their lives on the way," said Shahin Gobadi of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).
"They must be allowed to stay in Iraq. That is their right," he told Reuters by telephone from Germany.
At the UNHCR, men, women and children with relatives among the fighters who had been sheltered by ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein chanted slogans demanding they not be deported.
"We fear for their lives if they are forced to leave," said Hossein Dabaghian, whose cousin is among the group in Iraq.
The U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council this month ordered the expulsion of the members of the People's Mujahideen, or Mujahideen-e-Khalq, which since 1980 has been the main source of armed resistance to the Islamic administration in Tehran.
The Mujahideen say the expulsion was planned by Iran and reflected the "fantasies" of Tehran's clerical leadership about removing a group it considers a threat.
Iranian officials earlier this month welcomed the expulsion decision but denied they had arranged it.
Washington lists the grouping as a terrorist organisation.
The fighters, who in the past mounted attacks inside Iran from their bases in Iraq, have been disarmed and are guarded by U.S. troops at a camp east of Baghdad.
UNHCR officials said the problem fell under the competence of the Swiss-based International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) which handles political refugees and administers the 1949 Geneva Convention dealing with them.
But the officials said any attempt to send the fighters back to Iran would be a violation of the convention, a key plank of international humanitarian law. There was no immediate comment from the ICRC, whose headquarters are also in Geneva.