The US military has granted "protected status" under the Geneva Convention to members of an exiled Iranian opposition group interned in Iraq, France-based exiles and US officials said today.
The US head of detainee operations in Iraq, Major-General Geoffrey Miller, told the People's Mujahideen Organisation (MKO) its members held at a base in eastern Iraq had been recognised as "protected persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention".
"(This is a) triumph for the Iranian Resistance and the Iranian people," Mr Maryam Rajavi, head of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), said in a statement.
The United States confirmed it gave 3,800 Iranian rebels at the Ashraf base in Iraq protected status because Washington believed they had not been combatants in the war when US-led forces invaded Iraq.
The decision will allow detainees from the group access to the Red Cross and the UN refugee agency, the UNHCR.
But a US State Department spokesman said the protected status did not affect the group's designation by Washington as a "terrorist group" and its members in Ashraf were still being vetted to determine what crimes they may have committed.
Iran regards the MKO fighters in Iraq as one of its biggest external threats and wants the group's members handed over.
Diplomats say Tehran offered to exchange al Qaeda prisoners it is holding for MKO leaders but Washington refused the swap.
What to do with the rebels was a "conundrum", a US State Department official who asked not to be named, said.
"They probably have a well-founded fear of persecution in Iran. Iraq does not want them. And a lot of countries have not yet agreed to take then -- and wherever they go it has to be voluntary," he said.
Iranian government spokesman Mr Abdollah Ramazanzadeh said the US move to grant the MKO protected status undermined Washington's claims to be fighting terrorist groups.