IRNA, Moscow- A Russian scholar said the European Union (EU) manipulated such issues as terrorism and human rights for its own political purposes.
Talking to IRNA here on Saturday, Ludmila Kulagina, as a top researcher in the Russian Institute of Oriental Studies, criticized the recent EU move in removing the terrorist Mojahedeen Khalq Organization (MKO) form its terrorism list.
She said the move was a clear example of the double-standard policy adopted by the west on the issue of terrorism and frankly undermined the EU claim of fighting terrorism.
She believed the west treated such issues as terrorism and human rights in a biased and fanatical manner based on the double-standard policies inspired by its political interests.
Saying that certain western countries labeled organizations as terrorists according to their own whims and wishes, she said such a policy was clearly manifested in their behavior towards Hamas which was rejected by the west as a terrorist movement despite the fact that it assumed power in Palestine following a democratic election.
Referring to countless terrorist operations carried out by the terrorist MKO in both Iran and Iraq during the past three decades that claimed numerous lives, she stressed the EU’s delisting of the terrorist MKO lacked any legal or rational justifications.
Kulagina noted that the EU’s move, who delisted the terrorist organization instead of punishing it for the crimes it has committed, served the merely political purpose of fueling the tension between Iran and the US and some European countries by strengthening Iran’s opponents.
She said such a decision by the EU would negatively affect Iran-Europe ties.