Iran resistance group taken off of terror list

NY Times:

After a seven-year legal battle, Britain’s Court of Appeal ruled Wednesday that the British government was wrong to include an Iranian resistance group, the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran, on its list of banned terrorist groups.

Spokesmen for the group, whose name means People’s Holy Warriors, said the ruling appeared to leave Britain’s interior minister, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, with no further legal recourse but to order Parliament to strike the group from a list of more than 20 proscribed terrorist organizations under Britain’s Terrorism Act.

The court’s ruling denied the government’s bid to carry the appeal further, seemingly closing off recourse to Britain’s supreme appellate body, the so-called Law Lords. But the British government did not say what it planned to do.

The People’s Mujahedeen has roots that go back to the Iranian resistance to Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi’s rule in the mid-1960s. After the 1979 revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini turned against the group, executing many of its members and driving others into exile. It regrouped in Iraq in the 1980s and was listed as a terrorist group by the United States in 1997 and the European Union in 2002.

In 2002 the People’s Mujahedeen provided intelligence on Iran’s secret efforts to enrich uranium that led to United Nations sanctions against Iran and a confrontation with the West that continues today. But the group also has a record of unverifiable or erroneous claims.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry condemned the verdict as a “political ruling that lacks legal basis.”

...

What the Iranian Foreign Ministry would know about the legal basis for the verdict is not explained. I think the group has provided other valuable intelligence on Iran and its efforts to produce nuclear weapons. On the downside, they are basically communist in their approach to government. That explains why they could not get along with the Shah or the current religious bigots in charge of Iran.

The group is still on the US terror list despite the assistance they have provided on Iran's weapons program. The story indicates the US has no plans to remove them from the list.

There is no indication that the group has engaged in terrorism since the US invasion of Iraq. Many of its members are still in Iraq. I suspect that these people might be valuable assets for clandestine operations in Iran.