http://wiredispatch.com/news/?id=224312
From AP newswire:
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Britain removes the Iranian opposition group People's Mujahedeen of Iran from terror list
DAVID STRINGER
AP News
Jun 23, 2008 18:13 EST
British lawmakers formally removed an Iranian opposition group from the U.K.'s list of banned terror groups on Monday, after a seven-year campaign by the organization.
Legislators approved the decision of the Court of Appeal, which ruled in May that the People's Mujahedeen of Iran should no longer be listed as a proscribed group.
The decision gives the group more freedom to organize and raise money in Britain.
"After so many years of waiting, so many years of campaigning, so many setbacks and frustrations, at last our government has seen the light," said Baroness Angela Harris, a House of Lords peer who backed the move.
The PMOI is considered a terrorist organization in the U.S. and European Union. The group's British backers say it no longer engages in any kind of armed struggle
Leaders of the group have been fighting to shed its terrorist tag after a series of bloody anti-Western attacks in the 1970s — and nearly 30 years of violent struggle against the Iranian theocratic regime.
The group moved to Iraq in the early 1980s and it fought Iran's Islamic rulers from there until the United States invaded in 2003. American troops have since disarmed thousands of PMOI members.
British Home Office minister Tony McNulty said on Monday that the government had unsuccessfully appealed against the Court of Appeal's decision because of the group's violent past.
"The PMOI admitted responsibility for a number of horrendous crimes carried out against the Iranian people, both civilian and military targets," McNulty said.
Britain's list also contains organizations such as al-Qaida, Hezbollah and the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK.
Supporters of the PMOI said they now expect the EU to review the PMOI's status following the decision by a British court and lawmakers. "I think it would be strange if they did not follow our lead," Lord Steven Bassam said.
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