Former Solicitor-General and Lord Advocate for Scotland
Source: News.scotsman.com
THE decision earlier this month by the European Court of First Instance to annul for a third time the European Union's ban on the main democratic Iranian opposition movement, the People's Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI), was a critical confirmation that the group has been unjustly blacklisted.
That the verdict came out only a day after the hearing sends a powerful message that Europe's legal establishment is fed up with the EU's defiance of repeated previous judgments declaring that the PMOI is not a terrorist organisation.
EU officials openly concede that they banned the group originally in 2002 at the behest of the mullahs' regime. They did so in spite of the fact that the group spearheads the resistance movement to the mullahs' dictatorship.
As of today, 120,000 brave members of the PMOI have lost their lives to the ayatollahs' executioners. A further half a million resistance supporters have been savagely tortured.
Our government's position towards the PMOI can only properly be described as shameful. Jack Straw convinced the EU to ban the group after proscribing it here in the UK in 2001, despite the cross-party parliamentary backing it enjoys both here and in other European capitals.
The Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission reviewed all the open and closed evidence on the case and last year described the ban on the group as "flawed" and "perverse".
The Court of Appeal, presided by the Lord Chief Justice, upheld this view earlier this year and handed down an even more damning indictment of the government's allegations against the group. Parliament endorsed the verdicts unanimously and de-proscribed the PMOI in June, leading the EU into a troubled position over its own ban on the group.
The European Court of First Instance had already annulled the group's inclusion on the EU list in 2006, but the EU Council of Ministers ignored this after working at loopholes in the verdict's small-print.
When the Council of Ministers met in July to review the terrorist list, the UK was required by the spirit and letter of its domestic court rulings to vote against the PMOI's continued inclusion. Without unanimity in the council, the group would have been de-listed.
Instead, the government chose to abstain. When put on the spot, the Foreign Office minister claimed in parliament that EU member states could only vote "up or down" on the entire list, and thus it had no other choice but to abstain.
Not so, the latest court judgment shows. "On the contrary, the documents produced by the council show that such reviews on a case by case basis do occur within the CP 931 working group… It is clear that the member states retained the possibility to oppose its continued listing but that they ultimately chose not to make use of that possibility", the court said.
Once again, the government has failed to be truthful over its unlawful actions, this time to appease a tyrannical regime. All of us should cry out when we see the rule of law being trampled upon, not least when this is happening by the very people entrusted with carrying it out.
Maryam Rajavi, president-elect of the main resistance coalition that includes the PMOI, told the European Parliament that justice has once again affirmed that resistance against the mullahs' dictatorship can not be equated with terrorism.
She is right. The people of Iran deserve our admiration and support for standing up to a regime which uses terror at home and abroad to remain in power. At a minimum, the EU council should not hinder their main democratic resistance.
The government should be made to understand that the people of the UK strongly disapprove of its defiance of the rule of law. There can be no excuse for it not to vote against the PMOI's continued inclusion on the EU blacklist when the Council of Ministers meets later this month to decide.