Source: The Scotsman
It was a scathing verdict by a special court set up by the British parliament to hear an appeal against a government ban on the PMOI, the main member of Iran’s coalition opposition.
Refusal to lift the ban, the Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission (POAC) said, is "properly characterised as perverse". For good measure, in a sideswipe at the Home Secretary, it said the commission "is in the perhaps unusual position of having before it all of the material relevant to this decision".
In plain English, the commission found the Home Secretary had been wrong in law, had asked the wrong question, had ignored the evidence and so reached a "perverse" finding.
This judgment represents the final nail in the coffin of a sorry tale of appeasement not seen since the days of Neville Chamberlain and the Munich Agreement. At the behest of the turbaned tyrants in Tehran, the British government had, for more than six years, restricted the activities of the PMOI – also known as the MeK – helping ensure the survival of the regime.
The PMOI has been around for more than 40 years. With its mass popular support, the organisation was instrumental in the overthrow of the shah’s dictatorship. After the revolution, the Iranian people and the PMOI fell out with Tehran’s new fundamentalist regime. For this, they paid a very heavy price. During the ayatollahs’ reign of terror, the PMOI saw 120,000 members and sympathisers murdered. Amnesty International described the mass execution of some 30,000 PMOI prisoners of conscience in 1988 as a "crime against humanity".
Despite massive repression, the PMOI did not desist from its struggle for social justice, basic freedoms and a secular democracy.
In recent years, the PMOI has proven itself to be an ally of the West and an invaluable source of information on the nuclear and terrorist threats posed by the mullahs. The PMOI was the first to expose the regime’s nuclear weapons programme, in 2002.
The world can be under no illusions about the nature and ominous intention of the regime in Tehran. Ahmadinejad, the appointee of the regime’s Supreme Leader, talks of a wave of Islamic revolution soon reaching the entire world and of a final war between Islam and the West. The ayatollahs in Tehran do not represent Islam and they certainly do not represent the Iranian people. The vast majority of Iranians are opposed to the entirety of this vile regime.
It is this vast majority, and the PMOI, who represent the only viable solution to the threats posed by the regime. So, why did the British government hamstring the PMOI for six years? As Sir Winston Churchill said: "An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last". The British government has been feeding the Iranian people and the PMOI to the ayatollahs in the blind hope this might encourage them to change their ways.
This ruling is a timely boost for Iran’s courageous youths, as they take on the regime. It is also a further blow for the murderers and executioners that make up the Iranian regime. It is a victory for justice and recognition of the right of the Iranian people to resist for freedom.