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
he suggests the essentiality of a democratic change inside Iran. At least he has to err on the side of caution not to recommend an undemocratic, terrorist group for the accomplishment of the mission. He believes that the best solution is real democratic change in Iran and that, Britain and the EU must stop hindering the democratic Iranian Resistance as it strives for change.
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….”
The countries include Israel, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka and Turkey. Iran has also voiced criticism. America, Britain’s closest ally, is known to have serious reservations about the Government’s commitment to enforcing the law. The Terrorism Act 2000, which was introduced by Jack Straw, now the Justice Minister, was supposed to prevent London becoming an important terrorist hub, where groups were able to raise funds, distribute propaganda and plan terrorist operations.
..MKO reveals the reasons for its adopted strategy of armed struggle based on Marxist-Islamic eclecticism. Mojahedin were on the belief that armed struggle was an inevitable consequent of a historical determinism; any intransigent attitude would be equal to that of a reactionary. Although at first it was hard for the Westerners to comprehend what was lying behind Mojahedin’s ideology, but some later made references indicate that they were developing a real understanding of Mojahedin’s ideological infrastructure and methodology..