UK Justice Secretary: MKO remains terrorist

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London-Jack Straw, the British Justice Secretary, says the outlawed Mojahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) is a terrorist group from the viewpoint of his government.
Straw told IRNA the MKO is a terrorist organisation and the British government is at the same position that the government of the Islamic Republic is.
“When I was the home secretary, I said it was a terrorist group and the parliament agreed. The difficulty is that there is an independent kind of court which can make the final decisions out of the law. And it decided that the evidence do not support what the government was saying,” he said.
Following a court ruling in 2008, the British parliament de-proscribed the MKO from its list of terrorist organizations despite the abundance of evidence proving the MKO has conducted hundreds of terrorist operations against the Islamic Republic of Iran and Iraq, including the murder of Kurdish minority during Saddam Hussein’s reign over Iraq.
Straw said it is regrettable that the court removed the terrorist MKO from the country’s terror list.
Earlier a British Foreign Office Spokesman told IRNA that the British government continues to believe that the MKO is responsible for “vile acts of terrorism over a long period”.
Barry Marston added there is no dispute about the group’s terrorist activities and that the “British government is not satisfied the MKO has done enough to distance itself from its past”.
Asked about the fate of Nosratollah Tajik, the Iranian national who was arrested in Britain on charges of trying to smuggle night vision goggles to Iran, Straw said Tajik is now free on bail.
Tajik, 55, a former Iranian ambassador to Jordan stands accused of being the British link in a conspiracy to supply goggles to Iran.
He was allegedly secretly filmed discussing the three million dollar deal in a London office by men he thought would supply the equipment. They were in fact US agents. The US government now wants to extradite Tajik to face trial for his role in the alleged plot. Tajik denies the charges, saying he has been fit up by the CIA.
“Tajik is still in the country. He is free to move around. His case remains under consideration by the Home Secretary. I am not directly involved,” Straw said.