The Iranian opponent Maryam Rajavi welcomed at the European Parliament

Le Monde, December 14 – (Extracts) Tuesday, December 12 was a good day for Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, political wing of the People’s Mojahedin movement. She was officially welcomed at the European Parliament by its most important political group, the European People’s Party and European Democrats (EPP-ED), to present her political agenda. At the Parliament, growing number of Euro MPs think, like the Portuguese Socialist MEP Paulo Casaca, that she represents “the only opposition organization to the mullahs’ regime.”

Le Monde, December 14 – (Extracts) Tuesday, December 12 was a good day for Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, political wing of the People’s Mojahedin movement. She was officially welcomed at the European Parliament by its most important political group, the European People’s Party and European Democrats (EPP-ED), to present her political agenda. At the Parliament, growing number of Euro MPs think, like the Portuguese Socialist MEP Paulo Casaca, that she represents “the only opposition organization to the mullahs’ regime.”

The EPP-ED had invited Maryam Rajavi in July, but the Iranian government threatened to break off negotiations on its nuclear file, and so the visit was postponed.
 
At a press conference, Mrs. Rajavi stated that, because they had abandoned all military activities since June 2001, the People’s Mojahedin had been wrongly put on the list of terrorist organizations of the European Union, and that their assets had been frozen just after the 9/11 attacks.
 
Mrs. Rajavi was very pleased about the decision by the European Court of Justice on Tuesday to overturn the 2005 decision by the EU Council (of ministers) to freeze its assets. The Court of First Instance in Luxembourg concluded that there were no justifications for this decision, that the right to defense had not been respected and that it was not able to supervise its legality, as it was not exactly clear that the decision was made on the bases of which state decision. According to the Struan Stevenson from Scotland (EPP-ED) who took part in Mrs. Rajavi’s press conference, “the United Kingdom requested the freeze on PMOI’s assets because the mullahs told Jack Straw to do so.”
 
Mrs Rajavi affirmed that the court’s decision would allow the People’s Mojahedin to be removed from the list of terrorist organizations. “This order confirms the argument of the Iranian Resistance that the ‘terrorist’ label was, from the outset, an exclusively political matter aiming at appeasing the mullahs,” she said.