Some 318 members of the 630-seat Italian lower house...

Some 318 members of the 630-seat Italian lower house of parliament, a majority including leftists and conservatives, supported a petition by the Mujahedeen Khalq, an Iranian opposition group, that thousands of their fighters not be extradited from Iraq to Iran, as Tehran has requested, where the group said they would face torture and execution.
The petition appealed to the Italian government of Premier Silvio Berlusconi to publicly oppose the extradition.
The Mujahedeen Khalq had been branded a terrorist organization by the US and the European Union. After the US-led invasion of Iraq, fighters from the group who had been operating in Iraq were disarmed and detained at a camp in the east of the country.
"If these people were in Iran, they would be captured, tortured and sentenced to death," said Giovanni Russo Spena, member of parliament for a Communist party.
Guido Crosetto, parliament member for the center-right Forza Italia party, said: "Our battle is one for liberty and human rights."
In December 2003, the Iraqi Governing Council said it would deport the fighters, but didn't say where they would be sent.