The cross-party parliamentarians backing the delisting of the PMOI – an organisation dedicated to overthrowing Iran’s fundamentalist regime by democratic means – include a former law lord, Lord Slynn, two former solicitors general and a former home secretary, Lord Waddington. The POAC, a body set up by the government to hear appeals from organisations on the UK blacklist,
But Home Office counsel Jonathan Swift told the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips, today that the Government feared the PMOI’s professed cessation of terrorist activities was temporary and”for pragmatic reasons”. Lord Phillips, sitting with Lord Justice Laws and Lady Justice Arden, heard that the pro-democracy PMOI was formed 40 years ago with the aim of replacing the then-government of the Shah of Iran
According to the report, three senior judges headed by the lord chief justice, Lord Phillips, will hear the home secretary’s appeal. The government argues that the proscribed group has only temporarily ceased terrorism for”pragmatic reasons”. A Home Office spokesman said:”The PMOI was engaged in terrorism until 2001, and until 2003 kept an extensive arsenal at its base in Ashraf
Far beyond being an internal threat, terrorism stages a global threat that has to be fought by all the means. A globally proscribed terrorist organization, MKO may appeal to a variety of lawful judiciary bodies and take advantage of proficient lawyers and proponent parliamentarians to divert governments and international bodies from the potential terrorist threat of the organization.
We have to be consistent in our views of terrorists,”he told supporters of protracted attempts to have the MKO removed from Britain’s domestic list of proscribed organizations, suggesting they had been falsely influenced.”When we like the people whom terrorists attack, we call them ‘terrorists,’ when it is the civilians of Iran who are attacked, we have a bad habit of thinking of them as liberation fighters,”Malloch-Brown
British Foreign Office announced on Tuesday that the British government still considers the banned MKO a terrorist organization. Mark Mallon Brown, British deputy foreign secretary for Asia and the United Nations, protested a recent verdict by the Commission for Reviewing the Status of Banned Organization.
“…Lord Malloch-Brown: My Lords, I certainly concede the point that the organization is led by a woman [Iran-Interlink editor – the PMOI is led by a man, Massoud Rajavi, who is the sole decision maker in the organisation, Maryam Rajavi is only his lieutenant.], but I will risk the wrath of a portion of this House when I say that despite that, and despite what it says about the rights of women, the PMOI was involved in numerous terrorist attacks for a very extended period. At the time of the second Gulf War, it was considered by coalition forces to be completely assimilated into the security apparatus of the Saddam Hussein regime. Indeed, we had to disarm the organization to the extent of 2,100 tanks, vehicles and artillery pieces. Since then it has made no renunciation of terrorism and disarmed only in the face of pressure from coalition forces; so, despite what it has to say on women’s rights, we are not convinced that in other regards this organization has permanently renounced terrorism….”
According to a number of political analysts, the dual stance might be the result of internal political disparities among the parties. But it has to be noted that regardless of all disparities, the parties reach a consensus when it comes to confront any alien element that imperils the country’s general interests.
In an article released by Global Politician, Mr. Gale claims that blacklisting Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO/MEK) as a terrorist organisation first by the US in 1997, which was followed by the UK in 2001 and the EU in 2002, was a task to appease Iranian regime. I doubt that Mr. Gale has failed to have access to published reasons by the mentioned countries for proscribing MKO
the European Court of First Instance annulled an EU move to keep Iranian Mojahedin-e Khalq Organisation (MKO) on its terror blacklist, ruling it had not given the group a fair hearing or adequate reasons. However, the EU disputed the ruling and kept the organization on a new version of its list.