Appeals Court Rules for Iranian Group in Fight with State Department

A federal appeals court in Washington today (16/07/10) ruled that the U.S. State Department must reexamine the government's decision to designate the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran a foreign terrorist group.

The State Department has re-designated the PMOI a foreign terrorist organization several times since 1997, rejecting the group’s repeated assertions that it has disbanded paramilitary activity and disclaimed violence. The department in January 2009 denied the group’s latest petition.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit issued a 22-page judgment today in favor of the PMOI. The court found the State Department did not give the PMOI a fair chance to overturn the listing and had violated due process.

Mrs Maryam Rajavi, President elect of the Iranian Resistance said that the remand to the Secretary of State demonstrates that the terrorist label against the PMOI, and the insistence to continue it, has been merely a political decision in the framework of appeasing the bloodthirsty mullahs.  It is based on the illusion of changing the behaviour of the medieval regime ruling Iran.

Mayer Brown partner Andrew Frey, who argued for the PMOI in the appeals court in January, said “The PMOI stands for a democratic, secular, non-nuclear Iran. They stand for everything we’d like to see in Iran.”