Iran-UK: British parliamentarians will contest PMOI proscription in court

NCRI – “PMOI will make a new application to de-proscribe the movement.” These were the words in which Stephen Grosz, distinguished British lawyer, started his speech at a SYMPOSIUM OF PARLIAMENTARIANS & JURISTS in London on November 29. He added: “It will be made very shortly.” Excerpts of his speech are as follows:
The PMOI has been proscribed under the Terrorism Act at the beginning of 2001 in what seems to be a shabby deal of appeasement between the Iranians and the United Kingdom and a number of EU governments. As long as the Iranians play ball, the PMOI will remain a terrorist organisation and they dangle in front of them the possibility that if they don’t play ball, the PMOI will not be a terrorist organisation. Well, either it is or it isn’t. It doesn’t depend upon whether Iran develops a nuclear programme or not, whether they are nice to the West, or not.
This application will be made, unlike the last one (the last one was made by members of the NCRI) this application will be made by a group of members of parliament and members of the House of Lords who are directly affected by the proscription of the PMOI. This is the first time that an application to de-proscribe an organisation under the Terrorism Act will be made by Peers and MP’s, rather than people within the organisation themselves. It’s a mark of the importance of the application that these parliamentarians are prepared to do that. They have asked for a meeting with the Home Secretary, to ask him to explain to them the reasons why the PMOI is still proscribed and they are waiting for an answer from Charles Clarke on this.
Now effectively I can summarise in three broad headings why the PMOI are now seeking, or why it is now sought to de-proscribe the PMOI. First of all, the non-violent stance and their respect for human rights and democracy. The PMOI has engaged in no military activity at all since July 2001. They have totally renounced violence and Mrs Rajavi has made a statement in respect of the importance of respect for the human rights of everyone. How different from the current regime in Tehran.
Secondly, the PMOI in Iraq throughout the war they took no action in spite of the fact that they were bombed by coalition forces. They voluntarily disarmed, gave their weapons to coalition forces they fully co-operated with the coalition and US forces. In spite of a 16-month investigation into them by the United States there were no grounds to charge anyone with any violation of the law, and the Department of Defence and the coalition forces have recognised them as protected persons under the Geneva Convention.
Thirdly, co-operation in the fight against terror. The PMOI has provided intelligence to the British in Iraq and they been instrumental in providing information on the Iranian nuclear programme which has lead to the current pressure on Iran to abandon the nuclear programme. So what I would say then is that the real terrorists, the real terrorist are not the PMOI but the regime in Tehran itself.
Lord Alton told me that in the past 10 days a question was asked again about the reasons for the continuing proscription of the PMOI, the Home Secretary said he keeps the terror list under review and that he up-dates it from time to time but no organisation has been taken off it as far as I know. He was asked what are the continuing reasons for the proscription of the PMOI and the answer given in the House of Lords was fairly amandine and there was a promise to put the relevant material in the library. So far as we know, it hasn’t appeared there yet.
One of the things we will be doing is putting this to the test and making an application under the Freedom of Information Act to find out exactly what information the Home Secretary has on the PMOI which he says continues to justify the use of the terror tag for this organisation.
So those are the things we are going to be doing. We will be filing an application by members of parliament, we will also be meeting with the Home Secretary to press him on his reasons, we will be seeking to find out those reasons from the Home Secretary under the Freedom of Information Act, we will continue to gather signatures from lawyers for the joint statement. And this time we hope we will succeed in removing the terror tag.