Source: Wall Street Journal
Europe's second highest court ruled Thursday that the European Union has wrongly blacklisted an Iranian opposition group, adding fuel to accusations the bloc has abused its terrorist list to appease Iran.
The ruling by the European Court of First Instance in Luxembourg was the second the court has issued since 2006 ordering the EU to unfreeze the People's Mujahedin Organization of Iran's assets and remove it from the EU list of terrorist groups. The U.S. also designates the PMOI as a terrorist organization.
By MARC CHAMPION
Source: Wall Street Journal
Europe's second highest court ruled Thursday that the European Union has wrongly blacklisted an Iranian opposition group, adding fuel to accusations the bloc has abused its terrorist list to appease Iran.
The ruling by the European Court of First Instance in Luxembourg was the second the court has issued since 2006 ordering the EU to unfreeze the People's Mujahedin Organization of Iran's assets and remove it from the EU list of terrorist groups. The U.S. also designates the PMOI as a terrorist organization.
The PMOI's repeated victories in court cases that challenge its terrorist designation and the EU's avoidance of those rulings has become an embarrassment for the bloc. A group of prominent European lawyers attacked the EU over the issue last month, accusing it of abusing the rule of law.
"If the [European Union] continue to defy this verdict, it will clearly show that from the very first this listing was the result of a deal with the mullahs' regime, and not based on fact," said Maryam Rajavi, who heads the Paris-based National Council for Resistance in Iran, the PMOI's political wing, in a phone interview.
EU spokesmen have said repeatedly that they have sufficient evidence to justify the listing and deny abusing due process. The EU's next review of its terrorist list is due by the end of the year.
The PMOI is a group with Marxist roots formed in 1965 to depose the Shah of Iran. After the 1979 Iranian revolution, the PMOI turned against the clerical regime, carrying out numerous attacks.
However, the PMOI renounced violence in 2001 and no attack has been tied to it since. The EU added the group to its terrorist blacklist in 2002.
Iran has made the PMOI's international terrorist designation a key diplomatic priority. Europe has been leading negotiations with Iran to persuade it to give up its nuclear fuel program, which could be used for making weapons, since 2003. Delisting the PMOI could make Iran still more intransigent in those talks, analysts say.
Thursday's ruling found that the EU was wrong to keep the PMOI listed as terrorist in a December 2007 decision, despite a top English court ruling that the British government's listing of PMOI was "perverse."
The EU's terrorist listing of the PMOI was based on evidence provided by the U.K.
Since then, the UK lost a final appeal and was forced to take the group off its terrorist list. It also withdrew its sponsorship of the EU listing. France, however, took the U.K.'s place in July claiming new evidence, allowing the EU to keep the group on the list with a fresh decision. The PMOI has filed a new case in the Court of First Instance, which is still pending, to challenge that July decision.