| From TransAtlantic Politics, a new-to-me blog that looks promising, hat tip to Glenn Reynolds. |
Lawyers for the PMOI on Wednesday filed the law suit at the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, saying the EU is breaking its own laws by not following a verdict by the Court of First Instance last December, which annulled the EU's earlier decision to list the group. Any officially-designated "terrorist" organisations have their financial assets frozen and are forbidden from fundraising in Europe, writes EUObserver.
The PMOI started out in 1965 as a Marxist-Islamist anti-corruption movement in Iran but fled after suffering purges that saw over 150,000 members slaughtered by the post-cultural revolution Islamic regime. The Mujahidin organised cross-border raids against Iran from bases in Iraq in the 1990s but says it renounced the use of arms in 2001, with a 2003 US army report saying the Iraq PMOI wing no longer has any guns. In the past few years PMOI and its sister group, the NRCI, has positioned itself as the democratic opposition in Iran and attracted backers including retired US generals, members of the UK House of Lords, former EU judges and MEPs. The movement accuses the UK and France of putting it on the EU terrorist register in order to have cards to play in the Iran nuclear diplomacy game.