May 8, 2008
By John F. Burns
The New York Times
LONDON =97 After a seven-year legal battle, Britain=92s Court of Appeal
ruled Wednesday that the British government was wrong to include an
Iranian resistance group, the People=92s Mujahedeen of Iran, on its list
of banned terrorist groups.
Spokesmen for the group, whose name means People=92s Holy Warriors, said
the ruling appeared to leave Britain=92s interior minister, Home
Secretary Jacqui Smith, with no further legal recourse but to order
Parliament to strike the group from a list of more than 20 proscribed
terror organizations under Britain=92s Terrorism Act.
The court=92s ruling denied the government=92s bid to carry the appeal
further, seemingly closing off recourse to Britain=92s supreme appellate
body, the so-called Law Lords. But the British government did not say
what it planned to do.
The People=92s Mujahedeen has roots that go back to the Iranian
resistance to Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi=92s rule in the mid-1960=92s.
After the 1979 revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini turned against
the group, executing many of its members and driving others into
exile. It regrouped in Iraq in the 1980=92s and is accused of carrying
on a resistance campaign that has included killing Iranian diplomats
and former Mujahedeen.
In 2002 the People=92s Mujahedeen provided intelligence on Iran=92s secret
efforts to enrich uranium that led to United Nations sanctions against
Iranand a confrontation with the West that continues today. But the
group also has a record of unverifiable or erroneous claims.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry condemned the verdict as a =93political
ruling that lacks legal basis.=94
"Senior British authorities must explain the reason behind this
ruling," a spokesman, Mohammad Ali Hosseini, said in a statement faxed
to news organizations. He referred to the group=92s armed attacks on
Iranian officials and said the ruling "would only propagate terrorism
and violence."
Amid jubilant celebrations by the Iranian group=92s sup****ters in
London, Paris and Iraq, where 3,800 members have lived since 2003
under American military guard at a vast desert encampment outside
Baghdad, the group said it would seek to overturn a similar
proscription as a terrorist group by the 27 nations of the European
Union. Spokesmen for the group said that there was no further
justification for the European ban, because it was imposed in 2002 on
the basis of the 2001 British finding against the Mujahedeen.
A three-judge panel led by Nicholas Phillips, Britain=92s lord chief
justice, said in a written ruling that there was =93no reasonable
prospect of success=94 for the home secretary in proceeding with the
government=92s appeal of a November 2007 finding by the Proscribed
Organizations Appeal Commission, a quasi-judicial body that rules on
appeals by banned groups.
In effect, the appeals court upheld the claims by lawyers for the
group that it had complied with its own renunciation of violence in
2000, when it announced that it would no longer carry out terrorist
attacks and would concentrate on peaceful opposition to the government
in Tehran.
=93The only conclusion that a reasonable decision maker could reach,=94
the court said, was that since American forces disarmed the People=92s
Mujahedeen and allied groups in Iraq in 2003, the group =93has not taken
any steps to acquire or seek to acquire further weapons or to restore
any military capability in Iraq.=94
The Mujahedeen, the judges said, =93has not sought to recruit personnel
for military-type or violent activities,=94 nor engaged in =93military-
type training of its existing members=94 or sought to sup****t other
groups in attacks on Iranian targets.
=93To the extent that the P.M.O.I. has retained networks and sup****ters
inside Iran since, at the latest, 2002=94, the judges said, using the
abbreviation for the group=92s full name, =93they have been directed to
social protest, finance and intelligence gathering activities which
would not fall within the definition of =91terrorism=92 for the purposes
of the 2000 Act.=94
The People=92s Mujahedeen is also on the United States=92 list of banned
terror groups, and Bush administration officials have said in the past
that they have no plans to lift the ban. But if Britain, and later
Europe, lift their bans, the group would be able to use its
legalization as a basis for raising money and organizing resistance to
the ruling ayatollahs in Iran.
Spokesmen for the People=92s Mujahedeen in London and Paris demanded
after Wednesday=92s ruling that the British authorities, and the
European Council of Ministers, act promptly to remove the =93terrorist
label=94 from the group, allowing it to resume normal activities. The
group says it is committed to restoring democracy in Iraq, and opposes
any attempt by Iran to acquire nuclear weapons.
The appeals court ruling in London was received by People=92s Mujahedeen
sup****ters with bitter rebukes of Britain=92s Labor government for
having imposed the ban and adulation for the 35 members of British
Parliament, from across the political spectrum, who led the court
challenge.
Maryam Rajavi, 55, the Tehran-born metallurgist and People=92s
Mujahedeen leader who is also president-elect of the National Council
of Resistance of Iran, the Iranian Parliament in exile, said in a
video link from Paris that the ruling ended a =93grave insult=94 to the
group.
=93The terrorist label has crumbled,=94 she said. =93The era of grave
injustice to the Iranian resistance has come to an end. The mullahs
and their backers are left in disgrace. This is a great victory for
the Iranian people.=94
Mrs. Rajavi, who had one sister who was executed under the Shah and
another who was tortured to death after the ayatollahs took power in
Iran in 1979, demanded that the British government act immediately to
comply with the court ruling, and that the European Union and the
United States follow suit.
=93The terrorist label against the People=92s Mujahedeen of Iran must be
removed now,=94 she said. =93The terrorist label is the hallmark of the
era of appeasing the mullahs=92 regime. That era has come to an end.=94
Her remarks were met with wild cheering and the waving of Iranian
flags by sup****ters gathered at a London hotel, where the celebrations
were linked live by video to Paris and to the People=92s Mujahedeen camp
at Ashraf, Iraq, about 65 miles northeast of Baghdad near the Iranian
border. The scene at Ashraf was one of similar jubilation, with
hundreds of men in green military uniforms and women in grey robes
with scarlet headscarves leaping from their seats in a huge auditorium
to chant their sup****t for the court ruling and for Mrs. Rajavi.
After participating in the overthrow of the Shah, the People=92s
Mujahedeen quickly fell out with Iran=92s ruling ayatollahs, and its
members were among the primary victims of the terror that Tehran=92s new
rulers launched against their opponents. Thousands of them were
tortured and executed, and survivors fled, first to Europe and many
later to Iraq. Under Saddam Hussein=92s protection in Iraq from the
mid-1980=92s, the groups=92 military wing fought with Iraqi troops in the
Iran-Iraq war and organized terrorist attacks against Iranian targets
in Iran and abroad.
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