By Daniel Dombey in Brussels, Najmeh Bozorgmehr in Tehran and Andrew Bounds in Strasbourg
Financial Times, 12 dec. – Extracts – The European Union’s stance on foreign extremist groups was cast into disarray on Tuesday when the EU’s second highest court threw out a decision freezing the accounts of an Iranian organisation.
The Luxembourg-based Court of First Instance said that EU governments’ 2002 decision to block the accounts of the Mujahedin-e Khalq, or People’s Mujahidin of Iran, was invalid because the EU had failed to set out sufficient justification or to allow the targets of its action to respond.
In response, Jean-Claude Piris, one of the EU’s top lawyers, said that the bloc would adjust its procedures to implement the court’s findings as far as possible. The move may make similar actions more burdensome to carry out in the future.
In Tehran, there was no government reaction yesterday to the ruling. However, a senior advisor to the judiciary, Mohammad-Javad Montazeri alleged that the Mujahedin-e Khalq were “puppets of American and arrogant powers” – although the group is on the US’s blacklist of terrorist organizations.
The court took into account the group’s statement that it has renounced all military actions since June 2001. However it assassinated senior Iranian officials in the early years of the 1979 revolution.
Maryam Rajavi, one of the group’s leaders, who was in Strasbourg to visit members of the European parliament, hailed the court’s ruling as a “momentous victory” for justice over “religious fascism.”
Mrs. Rajavi, who had delayed a trip in July because Tehran warned it would break off nuclear talks with the EU if she went, accused Europe of an “indulgent and complacent” attitude to the regime.
