Press Association – Legal action is being taken by MPs and peers to try to force the Government to remove an Iranian opposition group from a list of organisations banned under anti-terror law.
The 25 – from all parties – have lodged an appeal against the proscription of the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI), claiming it is non-violent and poses no threat to security.
It will force Home Secretary John Reid to produce justification for the continued banning of the group – a decision first taken by David Blunkett in 2001.
Labour peer Lord Corbett, who is spearheading the campaign, accused ministers of "appeasement" of the Iranian regime by refusing to lift the restrictions.
And he attacked the Government for leading EU moves to continue a freeze on the PMOI’s assets despite a European Court of Justice ruling that it was unjustified.
The legal action is being backed by several senior figures including former Solicitor General Lord Archer of Sandwell.
Lord Corbett, chairman of the Parliamentary Committee for Iran Freedom, said: "The PMOI was only placed on the list because the mullahs demanded this as the price of opening talks with the EU about its nuclear development.
"It is to the United Kingdom’s shame that it sided with those who use terror at home and export it abroad rather than with the victims of that terror.
"It is even more shameful that this Government now has defied a ruling of the European Court to unfreeze the PMOI assets on the grounds that it remains a terrorist group.
"This makes a mockery of the European Court and sends another signal to the mullahs to keep developing nuclear weapons, keep killing British troops in Iraq, keep arming Hezbollah to try to unseat the elected government in Lebanon and keep arming and training Hamas to try and block any possible Palestine/Israel peace agreement."
He urged Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett to reverse a "wrong and dangerous choice" not to support the PMOI.
"Appeasement can only help the mullahs. Do you keep backing the regime or will you now support the resistance that stands in its way?
"You can’t do both, Margaret. Choose freedom not fundamentalism."
Human rights lawyer Stephen Grosz, who is leading the legal action, said the Home Secretary had produced "no evidence that the PMOI is concerned in terrorism at all".
The appeal lodged with the Proscribed Organisations Appeals Commission was expected to be heard later this year, he said.
Mr Grosz, of Bindman and Partners, said he "cannot begin to see" what evidence Mr Reid would be able to offer to justify the continued proscription.
Lord Carlile – the independent reviewer of the operation of terror laws – called for "serious examination" of the case in a report last year.
The PMOI claims to have entirely renounced violence in 2003 to act as a purely political force for reform in Iran.
Tory MP Roger Gale, one of those backing the legal action, said: "I am absolutely horrified by the position the UK Government has taken.
"It seems to many of us wholly wrong and inappropriate that, in the light of what is a very clear decision indeed, we should be blundering on in the way that we are and doing the bidding of others to no useful purpose whatsoever.
"Far from persuading the European Union to maintain proscription, the Government of the United Kingdom ought to be taking a clear lead and insisting that the findings of the European Court of Justice be recognised and implemented immediately."
European judges ordered in December the removal of the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI) from an EU list of terror groups suspects whose assets were frozen after the atrocities against Washington and New York in September 2001.
The move was based on a UK Government recommendation, but the European Court of First Instance annulled the decision because "fundamental rights and safeguards" had not been applied.
But the Council of Ministers has argued that the freeze should continue as a new list had been drawn up since the one judged unjustified.
But critics say exactly the same arguments apply and are ready to push for a fresh decision by the court.
The PMOI was set up 1965 with the aim of replacing the regime of the Shah of Iran with a democracy and had an armed branch operating inside Iran.
But it insists it "expressly renounced all military activity" as of June 2001 to become an entirely political organisation.