Maryam Rajavi: A victory for justice an human values

Speech on the deproscription of the PMOI/MEK in the UK

“A victory for justice and human values,” so described Maryam Rajavi, the Iranian Resistance’s President-elect, the May 7th landmark and unanimous judgment of the UK Court of Appeal, dismissing the Home Secretary’s application for permission to appeal against the November 2007 decision of the Proscribed Organizations Appeal Commission (POAC) that had ordered the Home Secretary to remove the main Iranian opposition movement, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) from the UK’s list of proscribed organizations.”

Led by Lord Phillips, the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, sitting with Lord Justice Laws and Lady Justice Arden, the Court of Appeal agreed with POAC that the Home Secretary had interpreted the law wrong. It thus upheld POAC’s conclusion, which had found, among other things, that the PMOI was not concerned in terrorism, and that the Home Secretary had failed to show that the organization had either the intention or the capacity to engage in such conduct in the future. The Court explicitly ruled, “Neither in the open material nor in the closed material was there any reliable evidence that supported a conclusion that PMOI retained an intention to resort to terrorist activities in the future.”

The Court of Appeal’s refusal to allow leave to appeal the POAC ruling leaves the Home Secretary with no remaining legal options. The Home Secretary must now lay a draft order before the Parliament “as soon as is reasonably practicable” for the purpose of removing the PMOI from the list of proscribed organisations.
The Court of Appeal also agreed with POAC’s conclusion that the Home Secretary’s decision to continue the proscription of the PMOI was “flawed” and “perverse.”

This historic victory marked the climax of a seven-year legal and political campaign by the PMOI and its many supporters in both Houses of British Parliament, who had maintained that the terrorist designation of the organization had absolutely no basis in law and in fact.

Indeed, as became evident during the eight-day open and closed hearing before POAC and later in the course of the written and oral submissions by the Home Secretary’s counsel before the Court of Appeal, the UK government was doing Tehran’s bidding. The UK Home Secretary made it plain that only the dismantling of the PMOI and the dispersing of its members in Camp Ashraf, Iraq, would have satisfied her that the PMOI was no longer concerned in terrorism. The government counsel asserted that the mere existence of the PMOI, especially its presence along the Iranian frontier in Iraq, posed a threat to the Iranian regime justifying the necessity of maintaining its proscription.

This adamant position made it abundantly clear that, far from being inspired by concern over fighting terrorism, the original terrorist designation of the PMOI in the UK in 2001 had actually been motivated by the UK government’s desire to award Tehran what it had sought the most: cracking down on the main opposition, which posed an existential threat to the regime.

For their part, both POAC and the Court of Appeal rejected the Home Secretary’s contention, affirming instead that the government had failed to prove that the PMOI had been concerned in terrorism.
The Court of Appeal’s judgment has far reaching implications. First and foremost, it pulls the rug from under the feet of the European Union’s May 2002 blacklisting of the PMOI, which has so far continued in defiance of the December 2006 ruling by the Court of First Instance of the European Communities annulling the PMOI’s designation.

In principle, the EU’s blacklisting of entities and groups must follow the decision of a competent national authority, which in this particular case was the UK government. Following the Court of Appeal ruling, that “competent national authority” no longer exists. Therefore, the EU must immediately follow suit if it has any interest in abiding by the rule of law.

With the chapter on the “terrorist” designation now closed, the UK and the EU must take the next step and apologize to the Iranian people and their Resistance for seven years of injustice and unwarranted damages inflicted on them. They must also remove all obstacles that have been placed on the path of the Resistance as the democratic alternative capable of thwarting Tehran’s dangerous meddling in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Palestine as well as its mad and irreversible dash towards obtaining nuclear weapons.