NCRI – On Wednesday, May 30th 2007, a news conference was held in Brussels to describe the illegal action by the European Council of Ministers in maintaining the People’s Mojahedin of Iran (PMOI) in the EU terrorist list.
Mr. Alejo Vidal-Quadras, vice president of the European Parliament, Mr. Mohammad Mohaddessin, Chair of Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran and Mr. Jean-Pierre Spitzer, French attorney representing PMOI spoke in the conference.
NCRI – On Wednesday, May 30th 2007, a news conference was held in Brussels to describe the illegal action by the European Council of Ministers in maintaining the People’s Mojahedin of Iran (PMOI) in the EU terrorist list.
Mr. Alejo Vidal-Quadras, vice president of the European Parliament, Mr. Mohammad Mohaddessin, Chair of Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran and Mr. Jean-Pierre Spitzer, French attorney representing PMOI spoke in the conference.
Mr. Alejo Vidal-Quadras stated he was there on behalf of the “Friends of Free Iran” Parliamentary group. This group is actively supported by 100 members and 5 Vice Presidents of the European Parliament. We have researched the issue of inclusion of PMOI to the terror list extensively. We reported our findings to the Council of EU Ministers in March.
Some of my colleagues even went to Ashraf and talked to hundreds of Mojahedin face to face in order to prepare this report. Everything is clear to us in the Parliament about this case.
Despite all our attempts the EU Ministers have remained silent. The reason is that they do not have any evidence and their decision is only based on political and economic interests. Although my colleagues and I have sent several letters to the Council, we have not heard back from them.
As you could guess if they had any evidence, we would have seen it by now. The Council’s handling of this issue is catastrophic. The newest evidence they handed to PMOI lawyers are from 6 years ago. The other documents belong to 20 years ago. This clearly shows that they lack sufficient proof.
The policy of the Council is to appease the Mullah’s horrific regime which is after nuclear weapons, violently meddles in Iraq and is dragging the whole region into violence.
This regime’s survival depends on suppression of its people. In this situation the behavior of the Council toward PMOI is not acceptable and only gives a green light to the regime for more repression.
We are faced with a political and ethical disgrace.
In summary, the court has ruled to remove PMOI from the list. The Council should obey the law. Keeping PMOI in the list is illegal. If the Council presents evidence against PMOI, it should be recent. Clearly the evidence does not exist. The important thing is that the Council should listen to all the voices. It should listen to all the sides, to the 1000 Parliamentarians from different European countries. Does anyone here think that 1000 members of parliament from democratic countries are all making a mistake?
“It’s a flagrant violation of the state of law in Europe," Jean-Pierre Spitzer said of the EU’s refusal to remove PMOI from the list. The court ruling is very clear and PMOI should not be kept in the list after this ruling. The word “keeping” is illegal and wrong. Today we say they should not "place” PMOI in the list. The law says principles are higher than any ruling. The verdict by the Luxemburg court is not a ruling on the procedures but rather a ruling on the basic governing laws, this makes it very significant.
We would like to view all the documents for “keeping” PMOI in the list. All the European rulings issued after this verdict unanimously declare that PMOI should be removed from the list.
We have requested from the Council to hand in all the evidence. Their response to the lawyers representing PMOI is that they cannot reveal the documents to a “third” party. This means they consider us, the lawyers of PMOI, third party despite the fact that they originally sent the letter to us. Today we know that the actions of the Council after January 30th has been stalling and wasting time before announcing a decision that has already been made.
Mr. Mohammad Mohaddessin was the next speaker. He said keeping PMOI in the terrorist list is a political and judicial tragedy. We have credible information from our sources within the regime that keeping PMOI in the list is one of the preconditions of the regime to continue dialogue with the EU. Worthless discourse where the only winner is the fascist theocracy ruling Iran. Another round of this dialogue is starting tomorrow.
The lawyers of PMOI have written 7 letters and presented 2000 pieces of documents to the Council of Ministers since January 30th. They have requested numerous times to see the Council’s evidence against PMOI. In response to these requests they have sent us 18 documents that are an additional embarrassment for the Council since they show the political objective behind the decision. These are outdated documents not related to terrorism. Some of them are governmental directives unrelated to the case. The latest is from 2001.
He then revealed the last letter from the Council which said since member countries have requested to keep the documents top secret, we are not going to send you anything else.
He said we have a lot of experience with top secret documents. We know that they don’t have anything against Mojahedin. In similar cases in United Kingdom these types of top secret documents when made public have actually were in favor of PMOI. That is why they are kept secret to begin with. We suggest to the Council to form an independent committee of lawyers and political figures such as Parliamentarians to investigate these secret evidence and report their findings.
He then talked about the Council’s documents and proved their irrelevance. He read the latest letter of the Council to Mojahedin where they noted that a committee of the Council on December 18, 2006 and on January 18, 2007decided on what route to take in order to keep PMOI in the list. This shows the essence of the Council’s decision. The Council has not decided to look for the facts but instead it has decided to keep PMOI in the list.
He then talked about the documents that Mojahedin had presented to the Council saying although the Council faxed back their latest evidence to lawyers of PMOI on May 21st, the lawyers responded to everything within 8 days. Yesterday the lawyers sent back 2000 pages and unlike that of the Councils’ these were all new and related to the case. These are not our claims and guesswork but documents by credible individuals and organizations such as members of parliament.
Mr. Spitzer concluded that the Council of Ministers had already made up their minds and are waiting for the right time to announce it. After all letter writings it is clear for us that the Council does not have any documents to prove PMOI should be put in the list. Therefore you could only conclude that the reason to keep them in the list is to appease the Iranian regime. Obviously the Council made the decision on how to keep PMOI in the list on December 18, 2006. This is an ethical disaster.
