BRUSSELS – the state which provided the documents does not consent to their disclosure," EU officials told PMOI lawyers in a letter on 14 May.
"Otherwise the position of the EU in international cooperation in the fight against terrorism would be compromised," the letter goes on.
The letter is the latest in a series of documents exchanged between the EU and PMOI since December, when EU courts annulled an EU decision of 2005 to keep the People’s Mujahidin Organisation of Iran on its list.
Officially-named terrorist organisations have their financial assets frozen and are forbidden from fund-raising in Europe.
EU officials say the court ruling does not cover a post-2005 decision to keep PMOI on the register, but all the evidence that Brussels has supplied to the group so far deals with pre-2001 activity, with PMOI claiming it has become a non-violent movement in the meantime.
The PMOI says its inclusion on the terror register, initiated by the UK five years ago, is a political move to give the west a negotiating chip in its efforts to get Tehran to back down on nuclear technology.
Some EU diplomats and Iranian expats believe the opposition group still has a sinister, fanatical fringe however. At least one of its high-profile supporters in the west has conceded the PMOI leadership is not a model of liberal democracy.
Euobserver, May 31, 2007
