International Conference of Parliamentarians &amp Jurists

Contents
- Time to Redress a Grave Injustice - The London Declaration - There is a strong case for the removal of PMOI from the British list of terrorist groups The Rt. Hon. The Lord Slynn of Hadley - Hard-won rights of democratic societies must never be given up in the face of threats Prof. Cherif Bassiouni - To remove PMOI from the terrorism list would make the world a safer place The Rt. Hon. The Lord Archer of Sandwell QC - Proscription of PMOI remains a blot on the democratic landscape Stephen Grosz - We have a responsibility to support the Iranian people in their aspirations for a free, secular state Baroness Gould of Potternewton - How could a democracy ban an organisation that seeks only to nd democracy and the rule of law in Iran? Claire Miskin - PMOIs case is a very shocking example of arbitrary proscription Professor Bill Bowring - The inclusion of PMOI in the terrorism list is scandalous Dr. Rudi Vis, MP - Terror label against PMOI is capitulation to the dictates of the ayatollahs Maryam Rajavi - Iranian Resistance is a major ally in confronting mullahs dangerous fundamentalism Lord Corbett of Castle Vale - Let us end the hypocrisy and de-proscribe PMOI Lord Clarke of Hampstead - Inclusion of PMOI in terrorism list was a gross, outrageous abuse Geoffrey Bindman - Right to resist oppressive regimes must be recognised in terrorism legislation Mark Muller - PMOI blacklisting has put thousands in jeopardy in EU states Wolfgang Kaleck - Proscription of PMOI was a good-will gesture to Tehran Lord Dholakia of Waltham Brooks - Britains reputation as Mother of All Democracies is at stake Imran Khan 5 6 9
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- Our government should be thanking PMOI for revealing the dark side of what is happening in Iran Win Grifths, MP - Politicians must press the Government to de-proscribe PMOI Lord King of West Bromwich - Britain must recognise the custodians of Iranian democracy and de-proscribe PMOI Andrew Mackinlay, MP - Let us show the Iranian regime and the Iranian people on whose side we stand: de-proscribe the PMOI Lord Alton of Liverpool - Target the real terrorists, not the victims David Amess, MP - Muster every power to get PMOI off the list Malcolm Fowler - An Unequivocal Message from Jurists from across the World Jean-Pierre Spitzer - Opening Statement Bertrand Favreau - Terrorism and Fundamental Rights Christophe Pettiti - A Just Right to Resist Against Oppression Henri Leclerc - Message of the Rt. Hon. The Lord Slynn of Hadley - Validity of the Inclusion of the PMOI in EUs Terrorism Lists Professor Henri Labayle - The PMOI and the Geneva Conventions Professor Eric David - The Arbitrary Nature of the PMOIs Designation Professor Bill Bowring - A national resistance movement Jean-Yves de Cara - A Political Decision Dr. Wolfgang Kaleck - The unfair consequences of the EU List Bernd Husler - EUs Contradiction Kenneth Lewis - PMOI Is A Legitimate Resistance Movement Osman Soan
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- The Presumption of Innocence Professor Bernard Bouloc - Summary of legal opinions Jean-Pierre Spitzer - Defend the right of the Iranian nation Maryam Rajavi - we are proud and honored to serve your cause Jean-Pierre Spitzer - A political error Yves Bonnet - Human Rights cannot be measured President of the Bar, Mario Stasi - Shameful bickering Patrick Baudouin - Purely A Well-meaning Act of Complicity with the Iranian Regime Franois Hritier - A Short-sighted Policy Mogens Camre - The ght against Islamic fundamentalism identies itself with the ght to introduce democracy Sid Ahmed Ghozali - An Unjust and Arbitrary Designation Roy Beggs - A Message from US Professor Schneebaum - A Scandal Franois Colcombet - A decisive battle for international law William Bourdon - Solidarity with the PMOI Mishaan Al-Jabouri - We want PMOI recognised as a democratic organisation John Cherry - Women suffer most from the injustice of terror tag Clair Miskin - Democracy is a peoples conquest Mario Lana - You shall not tolerate so very well the injustice that is not hitting yourself Olav Jirden
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- The PMOI cannot be qualied as a terrorist organization Dr. Rolf Gossner - We Iraqis want Mojahedin today in Baghdad, tomorrow in Tehran Ismail Ibrahim Hamoudi al-Shaikhli - A scandal and a political absurdity Jean Paul Benoit - For the sole purpose of pleasing the Iranian Regime Franoise Serres - A political decision, void of any legal grounds Hassib Aref - Resist EUs deal with Mullahs Warren Creates - A Legitimate battle with legitimate means, for legitimate goals Fabio Marcelli - We are going to stand up and protect Mojahedin Malcolm Fowler - Totally unacceptable Pierre Bercis Conclusions Bertrand Favreau - There should be no reward for the mullahs Lord Corbett of Castle Vale Summary of legal opinions - The Validity of the PMOIs registration on the anti-terrorist lists of the European Union under European Law and the applicability thereof by the judge Henri Labayle Bruno Nascimbene - Can the Peoples Mojahedin Organisation of Iranian (PMOI) be regarded as a terrorist organization? Legal opinion by Eric DAVID - Terrorist Designation with Regard to European and International Law: The Case of the PMOI Prof. Bill Bowring, Prof. Douwe Korff - Status of the Peoples Mojahedin Organisation of Iran as a resistance movement Lord Slynn of Hadley - Legal opinion by Dr. Jrg Arnold - Summary of the legal opinion by Dr. Reinhard Mar
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- Brief investigation of the PMOI case from the point of view of the
Swedish legal system by Kenneth Lewis
International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists
Time to Redress a Grave Injustice

The world watches with apprehension as Irans ruling mullahs persist with violations of human rights, sponsorship of terrorism, and nuclear development. The regime threatens regional and global security through a lethal mix of fundamentalism and nuclear weapons. As the EU has tried constructive engagement with the clerical regime, the mullahs have shown no willingness to respond properly, demanding that the main opposition group, the Peoples Mojahedin of Iran (PMOI), be listed as a terrorist group. Giving in to that demand has only helped those who use terror at home and sponsor it abroad, while the mullahs nuclear programme continues. It is time for the EU to focus on the democratic aspirations of the Iranian people. Europe and the rest of the world should be on the side of the millions demanding freedom and human rights, not those who have stolen these from them. We co-chaired a symposium at Church House, Westminster, London, on 22 March, where dozens of members of both Houses of Parliament from the three major political parties joined more than 500 lawyers, human rights advocates, trade unionists, clergymen, student activists and members of the Anglo-Iranian community to call on the Government to de-proscribe the PMOI and remove a serious impediment to democratic change in Iran. Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the opposition coalition, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, said via satellite link-up, The terrorist label against the Iranian Resistance is not only a move against an opposition movement. It is capitulation to the dictates of the ayatollahs and a barrier to change in Iran. Rejecting both appeasement and military intervention, Mrs. Rajavi called for support for democratic change by the Iranian people and the Iranian resistance movement. With the law on the side of the resistance, we must stand by the Iranian people in their struggle against the religious tyranny. On 15 March, millions of young Iranians heeded the PMOIs call to turn the traditional end-of-Persian-year re festival into a national protest against mullahs tyranny. These young Iranians need the support and encouragement of freedom-loving people around the world. By blacklisting their resistance movement, we are sending them the opposite signal. The terrorist tag must be hung around the neck of the real terrorists, the mullahs who rule Iran, not their victims. The symposium in London was part of a growing campaign to undo this injustice. Appeasement must end and the PMOI removed from the terror list to signal support for democratic change by the Iranian people and their legitimate representative, the National Council of Resistance of Iran. Lord Corbett of Castle Vale The Rt. Hon. The Lord Archer of Sandwell QC 5
The London Declaration Symposium of Parliamentarians and Jurists 22 March 2005

We, Members of Parliament and jurists, Recalling - The conclusions of the International Conference of Jurists in Paris on 10 November 2004, in which 500 jurists from across the world agreed, on the basis of ten legal opinions written by a number of distinguished experts in international law, that the designation of the Peoples Mojahedin Organisation of Iran as a terrorist organisation is not the outcome of a judicial process and, therefore, completely unfounded in law; - The Paris Declaration, endorsed by 3,800 European, American and Middle Eastern lawyers, which similarly opposed the terrorist designation of the PMOI; - The statement by 305 members of both Houses of Parliament in Britain in January 2004, which called for the urgent need to remove the PMOI from all lists of terrorist organisations, and a previous statement by 337 MPs (a Commons majority) and 100 Peers in 2001, which described the PMOI as a legitimate resistance movement; - The recognition in June 2004 by member states of the Multi-National Force in Iraq, including Britain, that all PMOI members in Iraq were protected persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention; - The statement by senior United States ofcials in July 2004 that an intensive sixteenmonth investigation had not come up with any basis to bring charges against any members of the Peoples Mojahedin; Noting - The presentation of a single Order to proscribe 21 organisations, which denied Parliament an opportunity to consider separately each organisation whose proscription was proposed; - The speeches made by an impressive number of MPs and Peers during the parliamentary debates in opposition to the proscription of the PMOI; - The condemnation of the continuing, grave violation of human rights in Iran in 51 resolutions of the United Nations General Assembly and the Human Rights Commission (most recently in December 2004); - The deal proposed by the EU-3 to the Iranian regime that if Iran agreed to suspend uranium enrichment activities, we would continue to regard the [PMOI] as a terrorist organisation (AFP, 21 October 2004), showing the ulterior political motives behind 6
the designation; Noting with concern - The severe consequences of the proscription of the PMOI in the UK and the violation of civil rights of British citizens and Iranians residing in Britain, which include, inter alia: a. The use of the PMOIs proscription as a reason to reject political asylum requests by the victims of political repression in Iran; b. Detention of individuals for alleged membership in, or afliation to, the PMOI; c. Searches of the homes or ofces of British citizens or Iranians residing in Britain for alleged membership in, or afliation to, the PMOI; d. Denial of citizens rights to freedom of speech, expression and assembly in defence of the PMOI, in violation of Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights; e. Justication of the bombing of PMOI camps in Iraq in April 2003 by British warplanes, which resulted in 50 fatalities and hundreds of casualties among PMOI members, despite the fact that the PMOI had publicly declared weeks before the war began that it would remain neutral in the conict and this neutrality was conrmed by the United States government after the war; Draw the following conclusions: 1. On the basis of the criteria listed by the Home Secretary for proscribing an organisation, the PMOI should not have been proscribed, for the following reasons: - As conrmed by neutral agencies, such as the United States Congressional Research Service, the PMOI has never targeted civilians; - The then Home Secretary, in his submissions to the Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission, noted that the PMOI does not represent a danger to British citizens abroad, and also stated categorically in Explanatory Notes attached to Order 2001 that PMOI has not attacked UK or Western interests and has no presence in the UK and therefore poses no threat to the UK; - Given that the Iranian regime is not democratic, the need to support other members of the international community in the global ght against terrorism cannot be cited as a reason for proscription of the PMOI; - The PMOI unilaterally ceased all military activities in the summer of 2001 and, in May 2003, it turned over all its weapons to Coalition forces in Iraq on the basis of a Voluntary Consolidation of Arms agreement; - The PMOI and the coalition NCRI have repeatedly called for free elections in Iran under United Nations supervision, but these have been rejected by the Iranian regime, as have the calls by the NCRIs President, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, for a referendum under UN auspices; 7
- The PMOIs broad popular appeal, most recently visible in the response by millions of Iranians to its call for a national protest evening on 15 March during the traditional end-of-year Iranian celebrations, is at odds with the terrorism label; 2. Clearly, the scourge of terrorism must not be tolerated, but the right to resist tyranny in the interest of democracy and the liberty and dignity of a people of a particular country must also be respected. We have to ensure that rights to achieve democracy and to assist in the achievement of democracy are not made impossible or frustrated; 3. In reviewing the Terrorism Act 2000, it is not sought to undermine effective and lawful measures against terrorism, but the ght against terrorism must be directed against real terrorists and their sponsors, and not against a legitimate resistance movement, such as the PMOI; Request - The Home Secretary to deproscribe the Peoples Mojahedin Organisation of Iran.
There is a strong case for the removal of the PMOI from the British list of terrorist groups
The Rt. Hon. The Lord Slynn of Hadley
The pre-eminent British jurist, the Rt. Hon. the Lord Slynn of Hadley, sent a message to the Symposium of Parliamentarians and Jurists in London, from Budapest, where he was attending a conference on European law. The message was read out by Lord Archer of Sandwell QC at the opening of the symposium. Lord Slynn of Hadley is Chairman of the Executive Council of the International Law Association, President of the International Federation for European Law, President of the Statute Law Society, a former Judge of the European Court of Justice and, until recently, a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary. Some time ago, I was asked, with Prof. Jean Yves de Cara, an eminent international lawyer in Paris, to advise as to the legal status of members of the PMOI in Camp Ashraf in Iraq. This was my rst acquaintance with the Iranian opposition movement. We came to the rm view that the PMOI members there fell to be treated as protected persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention. As a result, they had rights to property, rights to freedom of movement, rights to freedom of speech, but most importantly perhaps, rights not to be deported from Iraq, particularly to Iran. So we said that for them to be sent back to Iran either by the Coalition or by the Iraqi government would be a violation of customary international law and a grave breach of international human rights law. And I must say that our opinions put to the Coalition on this matter were listened to carefully. Subsequently, last June the United States Government and other members of the Multi-National Force in Iraq recognised the status of the members of the PMOI in Iraq as protected persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention. This was a very important determination, because it was made only after a very thorough screening of every single member of the PMOI in Ashraf by several government agencies. Senior U.S. ofcials subsequently announced that a sixteen-month review and extensive interviews by ofcials of the State Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation had not come up with any basis to bring charges against any members of the Peoples Mojahedin. In the British context, it is to be remembered that in the Explanatory Notes attached to Order 2001 of the Terrorism Act 2000, the UK government clearly stated that the PMOI has not attacked UK or Western interests.
At an international conference of 500 jurists from several European countries and the United States in Paris in November, legal opinions were presented to the effect that the PMOI had not been shown to be such a group. It seems to Professor de Cara and to me, on what we have seen, that there is a strong case for the removal of the PMOI from the British list of terrorist groups. As a matter of principle, it is plain to us that the scourge of terrorism must not be tolerated, but no less that the right to resist tyranny in the interest of democracy and the liberty and dignity of a people of a particular country must be respected. We have to ensure that rights to achieve democracy and to assist in the achievement of democracy are not made impossible or frustrated. On a different but related topic we have read of the agreement between the EU-3 and the Iranian government in November, that as long as there is no further nuclear activity by the government of Iran, the Iranian Mojahedin will remain on the proscribed list. Preventing nuclear proliferation is a matter of great concern for many states. This is not just a question for lawyers as such, but parliamentarians and politicians must decide whether morally, legally and in international law this is the right course to take. Perhaps the real position is that one is either a terrorist or one is not a terrorist. One does not become a terrorist only if something else is done or not done. One does not cease to be a terrorist only if something else is done or not done. These are all big issues. I wish your conference success in achieving its principal objective and hope that it will be a rst step towards the removal of the PMOI from the list of terrorist groups. Lord Slynn of Hadley
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Hard-won rights of democratic societies must never be given up in the face of threats
Prof. Cherif Bassiouni Professor Cherif Bassiouni, a recognised authority on international law, sent a message to the Symposium of Parliamentarians and Jurists in London. Professor Bassiouni is the honorary president of the International Association of Penal Law and president of the International Institute for Higher Studies in Criminal Sciences in Siracusa, Italy. He is also president of the International Human Rights Law Institute in Chicagos DePaul University. His landmark legal opinion on the legal status of PMOI members in Iraq was widely acclaimed in academic circles. Professor Bassiouni has served the United Nations in a number of capacities, including: Chairman of the Security Councils Commission to Investigate War Crimes in the Former Yugoslavia; Chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Diplomatic Conference on the Establishment of the International Criminal Court; and most recently, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Afghanistan. Excerpts from his message: I am honored to address this message to your conference in London. Europe in the 1960s and 70s found itself grappling with issues of terrorism which deeply affected their sense of security, as well as challenged their institutions. In particular, countries like the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, France and Spain have gone through experiences lasting many years - in cases such as the United Kingdom and Spain, several decades - resulting in casualties exceeding 20,000 in number. Notwithstanding these difcult experiences, the governments of these European countries have managed to hold fast to their longstanding traditions of the rule of law, and eschewed the temptation of curtailing human rights and civil rights in order to address the threats faced by their respective societies. Indeed, Europe during those troubled times has lived up to the admonition of Benjamin Franklin, who during the American revolutionary war, said: They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. Perhaps the experience of older civilizations are reminders that no matter what temporary threats such as those of terrorism may be, the hard-won rights of democratic and rule of law-based societies should never be given up in the face of threats whose likely occurrences is sometimes more the product of ineffective prevention. In a recent study of the International Bar Association, in which a distinguished member of your House of Lords, Baroness Helena Kennedy, played an important part, 11
it was emphasized that governments should not be led by fears, and that the rule of law should not be sacriced to the alter of fear. Regrettably, however, it seems that the whole world, pushed by the United States after its tragic 9/11 experience, has sacriced civil liberties and human rights with extraordinary ease. It seems that the veneer of the rule of law and human rights, which were so painstakingly developed after WWII, were easily scratched by a single event, no matter how tragic it was. Probably one of the most dangerous and long-standing implications of post-9/11 antiterrorism measures, are those that fall within the category of violating privacy. For sure, there is a legitimate need that intelligence and law enforcement expand their capacity for securing information as a way of preventing, controlling, and suppressing terrorism. However, the dangers to violating the privacy of law-abiding citizens in free and democratic societies have reached a level unparalleled in modern history, other than under dictatorial regimes. Moreover, the free ow of information between intelligence and law enforcement agencies on an international level, without any judicial controls, and without any ability for law-abiding citizens to correct faulty records, should be a matter of serious concern to all who regard the rule of law as still being an important value in free and democratic societies. In addition to the wholesale breach of individual privacy rights through wiretapping and other forms of intelligence and law-enforcement gathering, governments have come to listing organizations and groups as being terrorist organizations. The process by which certain governments do that is purely arbitrary and without judicial supervision over the executive branches discretionary determinations. In many cases, these decisions are made essentially for political purposes, which are unrelated to the organization in question. For example, the Peoples Mojahedin of Iran has been considered by the US government, as well as by the French government as a terrorist organization, yet there is hardly any evidence, at least in the last few years, that the organization has done anything more that political action against the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran. For sure, they have maintained an armed group in a location in Iraq close to the Iranian border, and have used it as a base of military operation against Iran. Irrespective of the legitimacy of their actions, that is a matter that relates essentially to Iran, and it is difcult to conceive how such actions could be deemed terrorism with respect to the United States, France, or any other country other than Iran. Cherif Bassiouni
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To remove PMOI from the terrorism list would make the world a safer place
The Rt. Hon. The Lord Archer of Sandwell QC The Lord Archer of Sandwell QC, a former Solicitor-General, Crown Court Recorder, and Chairman of the Council on Tribunals, is a member of the Select Intelligence and Security Committee of the UK parliament. May I welcome you to what I believe will be seen in the future as a very important stepping stone to a new beginning for the Iranian people. Before I begin, may I welcome here in particular some parliamentary colleagues, Lord Fraser, Lord Hylton, Baroness Ludford, Lady Masham, and we have a number of distinguished members of the diplomatic corps and, in addition, we have a whole range of members of the legal profession. I did not mention Lord Clarke (of Hampstead) and other parliamentary colleagues, who are going to address the conference later on. This symposium commemorates what many of us believe to have been a serious injustice. It took place three years ago and it has never been put right. Parliament has recently been debating the new Terrorism Bill, as you all know, and it gave rise to a passionate controversy. So it should, because it raises two fundamental questions about which we ought to be passionate. There are serious obligations on any government and on any parliament and, life being what it is, quite frequently the two principles are in conict and we have to strike a balance. First is the duty to protect the public form the acts of violence, which kill or injure innocent people. It would be an irresponsible government which failed to take that threat seriously and to put in place measures to counter it and to do that on an international basis. There is no complaint about that. The second is to ensure that those measures do not perpetrate an injustice to people who are innocent of any offence, who have no intention of participating in anything unlawful and who wish only to exercise the rights which we all claim. It is not always easy to reconcile those two principles, and there may well be debates as to how they should be balanced. But it is a vitally important task to balance them. Because if in the process of containing terrorism, we ignore the human rights of individuals, we lose the battle for hearts and minds. We hand the contest to the terrorists. They will have achieved what they set out to do. Two things, therefore, are beyond argument. First, if any organisation or body of
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people is to be labelled terrorist with all the consequences which will follow from that for their legal rights, and perhaps more importantly for their reputation, the process which leads to that labelling should be calculated to ensure that they are given every opportunity to be heard in their own defence, before those who take the decision make up their minds. Second, those who are charged with that decision should examine their own consciences to ensure that they are not inuenced by considerations which are not relevant to the decision they have to make; not by diplomatic deals, not by favours to governments who are not looking for a fair outcome, not by providing sacricial lambs on the altar of protable contracts. These things may not even be consciously on the minds of those who make the decision, but we are entitled to look at the policies they are pursuing and to consider whether their pronouncements are fair and balanced. When the former Home Secretary made an order including the PMOI in the list of proscribed organisations, he gave them no warning, no indication of the acts for which they were suspected. They were condemned and they were left to complain after the event, when the Home Ofce was already committed to the view it had formed. They were simply left to complain that the Home Secretary has not followed the appropriate procedures. Although of course it is not always possible to disclose all the evidence available to the Home Secretary, but he might have been interested to hear what the PMOI had to say about the allegation before he reached the conclusion, because when he simply announced that they were terrorists, how could they prove that they were not? All they could do was to say that they were not. You cannot call evidence that you are not a terrorist. You can say that you are not. You can deny any specic allegation that is being made, but the Home Secretary had already made up his mind. Sentence rst, verdict afterwards! It is a quotation from Alice in Wonderland and it ought to remain there. It did not help in clearing the minds of the Home Ofce and the minds of the two Houses of Parliament that the PMOI were lumped together with a mass of other organisations pursuing quite different purposes, in quite different ways, and raising quite different issues, when Parliament debated the order. Parliament was presented with a list of 21 organisations and told to take it or leave it. There have been investigations since. The American authorities in Iraq conducted a sixteen-month investigation into PMOI members in Camp Ashraf in Iraq and found not a shred, of course, for complaint. The authorities in France conducted an investigation and in June last year, at a wonderful rally, Madame Maryam Rajavi was able to announce, It has now been established that our only crime is to resist injustice. But that injustice led to a further one. If the PMOI did not know what they were accused of doing, there could be no argument as to whether what they were accused of doing amounted to terrorism within the denition of the term in the Terrorism Act. That denition, of course, is a fairly broad one. 14
Within that denition William Tell was a terrorist, Oliver Cromwell was a terrorist, Nelson Mandela was a terrorist. So it needs careful scrutiny to ensure that those who are to be labelled terrorists were not simply exercising their right to protest against the actions of their government, particularly when their government has imprisoned or tortured those who have ventured to protest. It would clarify everyones mind if it could be made clear just what it is that the PMOI is accused of doing. There are two things we know, however: in Iran, simply to take part in a political demonstration, simply to disagree with the government, can get you arrested or imprisoned. There is no lawful protest, because protest is not tolerated. Only months ago, we saw a report from Amnesty International condemning the whole legal system in Iran. It said that the judiciary is not permitted independence of the government; that the functions of investigator and judge are brought together in the same case, so that the same person decides whether there is a case and then adjudicates on it. It said that the independence of lawyers is undermined by the controls imposed by the authorities on the legal profession and they are controlled by the government. It said the courts cannot restrain the government, because it is the government who restrains the courts. That was a report by Amnesty International, but of course that does not stand alone. The human rights record of the Iranian regime has been condemned by the United Nations and its committees over 50 times. Time and again, those who are here on this platform have spoken about imprisonment, torture, public hangings, the hanging of children. I believe it is the only regime in the world which still imposes the death penalty on children. A few months ago, we saw a video of a man being blinded by the order of a court. If ever the right to protest needed to be recognised by the law, it is in Iran. That is not all that is to be said about the mullahs regime. We are discussing who should be labelled terrorist. The commission which in the United States investigated the September 11 attacks reported that at least ten of the terrorists had travelled through Iran and the Iranian government had instructed its border guards not to stamp the passports of Al-Qaida members, who had been in training camps in Afghanistan, so that they would not disclose from where they were travelling. Now, that does not establish that the Iranian government knew the details of the 9/11 attack, but it does indicate strongly that they are providing a way for known terrorists to move about without arousing suspicion. At the last count, of the 22 people on the United States most wanted list of terrorists, seven were known to be sheltering in Iran. The regime does not restrict its activities within its own jurisdiction. This is the regime which promulgated the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, a British citizen living in the United Kingdom, and declared it to be the duty of Muslims to murder him wherever he might be found and in whichever jurisdiction he might be. At least 35 murders of political opponents of the regime are known to have taken place outside its jurisdiction 15
in other peoples countries. Many of the attacks on the British forces in Iraq were associated with members of the Revolutionary Guard. It seems that whenever someone turns over the stone, there underneath are the ayatollahs and their Revolutionary Guard. At the moment, in order that the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians may proceed, Syria has somewhat reluctantly agreed to withdraw its forces from Lebanon. But they are not the only foreign forces in Lebanon. There are the Revolutionary Guard, training members of Hizbullah. They should not be there. United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559 calls on all remaining foreign forces to withdraw from Lebanon and, as a requirement, it adds the disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese and nonLebanese militias. So what lawful basis is there for the presence of the Revolutionary Guard, where they can have no business except to start up trouble? The question is therefore inescapable: who are the terrorists? Those who are at the very center of an international network of terrorism, or those who are protesting at their activities? I suggested earlier that if any group of people are to be labelled terrorists, those who make that decision should examine their own consciences to ensure that they really are satised with cases being made out and that they are not inuenced by the hope of diplomatic favours. Now we might have expected that a tyrannical regime, which holds human rights in contempt, would receive little support or comfort from governments of Western Europe, who preach respect for human rights, and particularly from the government of the United Kingdom. But appeasing the mullahs seems to have become an obsession. In October 2003 the foreign ministers of the E-3 countries UK, France and Germany struck a deal with the government of Iran. In return for them not referring the question of Irans nuclear weapons to the Security Council, the mullahs agreed to suspend their nuclear programme and to ratify the Additional Protocol to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which permits UN inspectors to make unannounced visits to suspected nuclear sites. Twelve months later, in October 2004, it was clear they had made no effort to keep those promises. So what did the EU-3 do? They announced a further agreement with the regime. They guaranteed to Iran political, security-related and technological concessions and still no reference to the Security Council, in return for what? In return for the mullahs agreement to do what they had already agreed to do as a part of the arrangement 12 months earlier and which they totally failed to do. How many deals do we need to do and how many concessions do we have to make to get the mullahs to keep the promise they made as part of a large round of negotiations? And both the EU-3 and the Iranian regime announced that together they were going to ght terrorism. The EU-3 were joining with the wolf to safeguard the sheep. Apparently, it was a term of the agreement that the PMOI should remain on the 16
terrorist list. That now seems to be admitted, though what nuclear proliferation has to do with who is a terrorist is still a complete mystery. The irony, of course, is that PMOI has no presence in the United Kingdom. So far as I am aware they have no one stationed here. To remove the stigma of proscription of the PMOI would send an important message and make the world a safer place. It is clear that the present regime is not going to put an end to its nuclear programme. That leaves the international community with three options. They could refer the case to the Security Council. This would likely lead to debate and delays and to an uncertain outcome. They could invade Iran, but hopefully no one would be happy to contemplate another war. The third option is that they could encourage the Iranian People to put an end to the problem themselves, as they already would clearly like to do. It would be a message that the whole international community would support. That would be an important step towards the return of human rights in Iran, towards ending the mullahs nuclear threat, and towards an opportunity for the people of Iran to regain their freedom. It would herald a new beginning.
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Proscription of PMOI remains a blot on the democratic landscape

Stephen Grosz Stephen Grosz, Partner and Head of Public Law and Human Rights Department in Bindman and Partners, is a leader in the eld of civil liberties and human rights law. He sits on the Executive Committee of JUSTICE and the Advisory Council of the British Institute of Human Rights. He is a member of the Management Committee of the Human Rights Lawyers Association and is chair of the Law Societys Domestic Human Rights Reference Group. It was my privilege to represent the National Council of Resistance of Iran when it applied for the de-proscription of the PMOI. I did that with colleagues Geoffrey Bindman, Lord Lester of Herne Hill QC, Rabinder Singh QC, and Julia Sohrab. It was a privilege, but I cannot say it was an unalloyed pleasure, because it left me feeling thoroughly dissatised with the way the system works in proscribing organisations under the Terrorism Act and with the procedure, being quite inadequate as it is for trying to have proscription set aside. In Terrorism 2000 Act, proscription powers are the sort of powers ministers like best of all. It is a far-reaching power in broad terms with very few fetters on it, minimum parliamentary interference, and not many procedural guarantees. That is great from the ministers point of view, but it is dramatic and serious for organisations such as PMOI, who nd themselves on the receiving end of it. Let me explain under ve headings what was exactly wrong with it and how it was shown to be wrong in the procedure which we followed. First of all it is a very draconian power. As soon as an organisation is proscribed, it immediately becomes an offence to belong to it or to even confess to be a member of it, to invite support for it, and to address a meeting for the purpose of encouraging support for it. This meeting may well be an offence. Providing money or property for the purpose of the organization is an offence. Now, that might have included the legal fees which the PMOI paid to its lawyers in order to get itself de-proscribed and we actually went to the length of going to the Attorney General to ask whether it was all right for them to pay us. They said it was. Now these are very serious interferences with freedom of speech, freedom of association and property rights more-or-less by executive decree, which brings me to the next point: the wide discretion given to the Secretary of State. Terrorism Act provides a very broad denition of terrorism, which can extend from Al-Qaeda 18
to animal rights groups. It is wide enough to include organizations like the African National Congress. The Terrorism Act does not lay down any criteria to govern the exercise of the discretion whether to proscribe a terrorist organization or not. That is entirely left to the Secretary of State. He can choose from among the organizations that come within the denition which he is going to proscribe and which he is not going to proscribe. The Secretary of State laid down some loose criteria on the basis of which he was going to exercise that power. Even on those criteria, it is hard to see how and why the PMOI came to be proscribed. One is left with the suspicion that proscription is used as a tool of foreign policy to curry favour with other regimes. We have heard already about the accord on the basis of which if Iran enriches uranium, then PMOI is not a terrorist organization, and if it does not, then it is. What can parliament do? That was the next problem we encountered, the exclusion of any effective scrutiny of proscription at all. When the PMOI was proscribed in March 2001, Parliament was presented with a list of 21 organisations, including Al-Qaeda, Hamas and all sorts of organizations. The House of Commons had one-and-a-half hours to debate the Order, half an hour of which was taken by the Secretary of State. The House of Lords had three-and-a-half hours, similar time probably taken by Government spokesman in that chamber. That did not leave a great deal of time for debate on individual organizations, probably four minutes per organization, if you averaged it out. And the list was takeit-or-leave-it. It could not be amended. It could only be accepted or rejected as a whole. So if you wanted to proscribe Al-Qaeda, you had to proscribe the PMOI as well. If you wanted to keep the PMOI off the list, you were accused of not wanting to proscribe Al-Qaeda . Many members of both Houses of Parliament complained about this procedure and the lack of time allotted for a decision with such far-reaching consequences. Next point: the absence of any guarantees of procedural fairness. Before the Secretary of State made his decision to proscribe or to propose proscription to Parliament, we asked him to meet representatives of the NCRI to hear their representations. We asked to know what was the case against them. We were told this would not be appropriate and he would not meet us. Before we made an application to de-proscribe, which is the next stage, we asked to see all the unclassied material which had formed the basis of the Secretary of States decision. We were told that that was not appropriate, either. When we formed the application to de-proscribe, we asked for an opportunity to meet the Secretary of State to ask any questions which he might have on the material we put before him. We were told that that was not appropriate either. Now how can it be that a decision of such an importance can be made on the basis of material which neither has been seen by the organization concerned, nor by 19
Parliament, and without hearing what the subject of that decision has to say? That leads me to the next point, the absence of any effective judicial control once the Secretary of State has made his decision. The Terrorism Act lays down rather an odd procedure. Once an organization has been proscribed, someone, which can be anybody, has to ask the Secretary of State to de-proscribe it. So they have to say, for example, please reverse your decision and he can say, all right, then! He has another ninety days to consider whether to de-proscribe, during which period of course the organisation remains proscribed and all those offences continue to apply. If the Secretary of State refuses to de-proscribe, which he has in all cases so far, the Terrorism Act establishes a special body called the Proscribed Organizations Appeal Commission (POAC) to hear appeals. We advanced before POAC all of the legal arguments which I have outlined on fairness, interference with human rights, and the rule of law. POAC ruled against PMOI on all of those arguments: the procedure was ne, everything was fair! PMOI were denied access to large swathes of material, which were said to have formed the basis of the Secretary of States decision. A special advocate was appointed, who did the see the material, but he could only talk to the representatives of the NCRI before he saw that material. He could invite them to tell him anything they wanted which might be relevant to the submissions he might make to POAC on the subject of de-proscription, but once he had seen that material, he was not allowed to share anything with them. In order to make sure that he did not let anything slip out, he was not allowed to talk to them at all. So PMOI were unable to see or to meet the substantial part of the case, which the Secretary of State was advancing simply because they did not know what it was. We said it would be necessary to cross examine the Secretary of States witnesses. POAC was uncertain whether it should allow us such powers. We felt like that it was pretty unlikely that they were going to. Now faced with the prospect of an expensive and lengthy hearing, and what appeared to them to be a hostile environment, PMOI decided, rightly in my view, that their efforts, funds and time could be better spent by effectively promoting democracy in Iran, rather than paying lawyers to go through something which was effectively a charade. Ali Safavi of the NCRI appeared in front of POAC at the nal hearing to read a statement explaining why they were not going to go ahead, and I have to say that judging from the hostility which exuded from the bench when he made his statement, the decision to not to proceed had been an entirely right one. Now, so much for procedure, what about the substance? In a fair, lawful system, PMOI would never have been proscribed in the rst place. In a fair, lawful system, PMOI would have had an opportunity to convince the Secretary of State before he made his decision that it was no threat to British interests anywhere in the world; that 20
it is an organization dedicated to promoting democracy and opposing an oppressive regime, which itself sponsors and exports terrorism; that democratic opposition had been brutally suppressed; that armed struggle had been the only alternative, and that the information on which the Secretary of State based his decision was largely inaccurate. In a fair, lawful system, Parliament would have had ample material on which to make its judgment. Both Houses would have had adequate time to debate the matter, and they would have voted on each organization separately. Had they done that, there is little doubt that they would not have proscribed PMOI. Indeed, a majority of both Houses have repeatedly expressed support for the Iranian opposition. Had they been given that opportunity, they would not have voted to proscribe PMOI. The Labour Party itself used to welcome representatives of the Iranian opposition to its annual conferences, until it got to power. In a fair, lawful system of appeal, the courts would have ruled that the wide discretion given to the Secretary of State in the absence of any procedural guarantees simply did not accord with the rule of law and they would have ruled that the Secretary of States case for proscribing PMOI simply did not stack up, and that the interference with its fundamental rights could not be justied as necessary in a democratic society. Proscription of PMOI remains a blot on the democratic landscape and it is high time that the government relented and dropped the terror tag without further delay. Anyone can apply to the Secretary of State to invite him to de-proscribe PMOI. Given the hostility which the NCRI faced, they would not be going down that road in a hurry, I expect. There is nothing stopping a group of parliamentarians, a group of lawyers or both in making that application in the hope that it would receive a more serious and anxious consideration than it did the last time round. I hope that it does.
21
We have a responsibility to support the Iranian people in their aspirations for a free, secular state
Baroness Gould of Potternewton Baroness Gould, a distinguished womens rights campaigner in Britain, chairs the governments Independent Advisory Group on Sexual Health and HIV. Joyce Gould was Chief Woman Ofcer of the Labour Party between 1975 and 1985. I was in a meeting related to the general elections today, but I particularly wanted to leave that meeting and come here, because it is a great privilege for me to be able to come and express my solidarity with women of Iran and also to be able to express New Year greetings to Iranians everywhere in this audience and throughout the world. I trust that this will be the year in which a dark and brutal chapter in Irans proud history will close and a new dawn will begin. It is over two decades after the Iranian peoples struggle to seek freedom. I want to talk about the terror that has been perpetrated by the state on the women and the children of Iran. Iran has the highest number of political executions in the world and women make up a large percentage of the victims. Of the 120,000 political executions since 1979, a third of the victims were women. In the past year, at least four women were hanged in public. Eight are on the death row and six more are waiting to be stoned to death. A 16-year-old girl was hanged in public in northern Iran. She was charged with acts incompatible with chastity. A 19-year-old girl, Laila M., who has a mental age of eight, was similarly charged after she was forced into prostitution by her mother and it wasnt her mother that was condemned; it was the child herself. Since 1990, eleven child offenders have been executed. Last year, a 14-year-old boy died after receiving 85 lashes for eating in public during Ramadan. The boy suffered a brain hemorrhage. One could go on giving example after example, but it is a little too distressing sometimes to do so. These actions clearly contradict the statement that Iran has suspended the death penalty for juveniles, causing the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child to call on Iran to abolish the death penalty, as well as to abolish ogging and stoning for people who committed crimes as minors. Another form of violence against children is child prostitution. Child prostitution has
22
risen 635 percent in recent years. Every month, an average of 45 Iranian girls, age 16 to 25 are taken to Quetta in Pakistan to be sold as sex slaves. Reports in Tehrans newspaper indicate that senior government ofcials have been involved in human trafcking. There are at least 300,000 run-away girls in Iran. Government gures released in January show that more than 12 million Iranians live in absolute poverty, 70 percent of whom are women, in contrast to mullahs allocating billions of dollars to acquire weapons of mass destruction. It is not often that I would quote George Bush, but I think his statement on February 2, in his State of the Union address, that Iran is the worlds premier state sponsor of terror, pursuing nuclear weapons while depriving its people of the freedom they seek and deserve. That is a very true statement. But what makes the plight of the Iranian women under the rule of Islamic fundamentalist particularly appalling is that discrimination against women has been institutionalized and incorporated into the law. By law, women do not have the right to become judges, presidents or religious leaders. And in more than a quarter of a century of mullahs rule, no woman has been appointed as a cabinet minister or provincial governor. Not a single woman occupies a seat in powerful institutions such as the Expediency Council, the Guardian Council, the Assembly of Experts, or sits on the judiciary. It is time to speak out on behalf of the millions of women who are being suppressed in Iran, and for those reasons I was pleased to sponsor the recent conference in Paris, United against Fundamentalism and for Equality. We cannot turn a blind eye on the violation of the most elementary rights of the Iranian people, particularly women. This position is in sharp contrast to the leading role women play in the National Council of Resistance of Iran. Women today make up more than 50 percent of the Resistances parliament-in-exile. The presence of women in political leadership is indispensable to reject fundamentalism and one of the best guarantees for democracy and human rights in the future Iran. It is also clear that Iran is set to be a member of nuclear club, reinforced by the establishment of secret nuclear research centre to train its scientist in all aspects of atomic technology and by the resistance to the re-visiting of suspect nuclear sites by the UN monitoring agency. But the answer is not war, nor is it appeasement. It seems the more there is an attempt to engage the mullahs, the more oppressive the regime becomes, and human rights violations increase. Like others, I agree the answer has to be democratic change brought about by the Iranian people. As democrats, we have a responsibility to support the Iranian people in their aspirations for freedom, for democracy, and for a secular state. I hope that this time next year, I along with the rest of the platform will be able to come along to a conference like this to celebrate democracy in a free Iran. 23
How could a democracy ban an organization that seeks only to nd democracy and the rule of law in Iran?
Claire Miskin Claire Miskin is an experienced Barrister at Three Dr Johnsons Buildings, Temple, and a Recorder. She is Master of the Bench at Middle Temple and former Chair of the International Practice Committee of the Bar Council (and the rst woman to hold this position). Claire is also the joint chair of the Womens Interest Group of the International Bar Association. I really wanted to endorse and reinforce what has just been said by Baroness Gould. It is perhaps worth considering, when one is reviewing the legalities of the Terrorism Act, what exactly it is that this resistance movement is resisting. Perhaps one of the things one might rst consider is this. You have heard about the slavery of women and children: in ten months of last year, the Iranian government proudly announced that 649 girls under 14 had been arrested. We do not like to inquire what happened next: from what you have heard, you can well imagine. You have heard also from other speakers that when such people are brought to trial, there is no such thing as a lawyer free to defend them. Judges are told what to say. All this gives a new meaning to the word injustice. In November in Paris, I was lucky enough to be introduced to President Maryam Rajavi, and I asked her what her particular view was of the situation with regard to women. She said that the injustice bears particularly hard on girls and women. I asked her to give an example, and she said, women and girls, when they are put in prison and before they are actually accused of any particular offence, they are forced into prostitution. And some of the most avid consumers of their services are indeed the mullahs themselves. This of course makes something of a nonsense of the idea that all of this is being done in the interest of the national propriety and religious observance. A further manifestation of what can be expected is that a number of distinguished persons in the religious establishment in Iran have been quite happy to say that men must regard their wives and women generally as slaves. We call ourselves a democracy and we say that we live by the rule of law. Yet, we have banned an organization that seeks only to nd both democracy and the rule of law in Iran. Can we really, as upholders of the rule of law, support a regime in which not only is cruelty and oppression the norm, but also those very persons in power who should be protecting the weakest in society are themselves exploiting and taking advantage of them. 24
PMOIs case is a very shocking example of arbitrary proscription

Professor Bill Bowring Professor Bill Bowring is director of the Research Institute for Human Rights and Social Justice at the London Metropolitan University. Together with Professor Douwe Korff, he wrote a legal opinion on the inclusion of the PMOI in terrorism lists and presented his papers at the International Conference of Jurists in Paris in November 2004. He is also the founder of the European Human Rights Advocacy Centre (EHRAC) and acts as an expert and trainer for the United Nations and Council of Europe. I am grateful for the invitation to be here with you this morning. I bring with me apologies from my colleague, Professor Douwe Korff, a very redoubtable Dutchman who teaches with me at the my university. He was the author with me of a joint opinion which we wrote for the conference on Terrorism Lists: the European, American and International Law Approach, held in Paris last November. The approach both of us have taken in relation to this issue is not as experts on Iran, which neither of us holds ourselves out in that capacity, but rather as people who are very concerned about the humans rights issues arising both from the Terrorism Act in Britain, and from the positions taken by the European Union in relation to the United Nations Security Council resolution. We considered three questions in this 34-page opinion. First, what is the signicance in law of the word terrorist? Second, how is it that an organisation can nd itself designated as terrorist? And third, what can the organisation concerned do about it? We like very much the remark made by Judge Rosalyn Higgins of the International Court of Justice a few years ago, when she said, Terrorism is a term without any legal signicance. It is merely a convenient way of alluding to activities, whether of States or of individuals, widely disapproved of and in which either the methods used are unlawful, or the targets protected, or both. And part of our opinion is devoted to looking at the various denitions that have so far emerged. Neither of us has any difculty with the idea that any state, in order to protect its citizens and the people living within its territory, has a duty to ght crime, in particular serious crime, and a duty to protect its territorial integrity. At the London Metropolitan University, I teach about the right of people to self determination as one of the most important principles of international law, and I teach about the national liberation movements which have played such an important role in 25
decolonisation, in particular in the 1970s and 1980s. The main reason why, during that period, it was not possible to arrive at a denition of terrorism in the United Nations context was because of the fact that almost every single one of those liberation movements would have been classed as a terrorist organisation with the denitions now offered. It is impossible to think of a single one which would not come into that category. What that tells one is not that there are not very serious crimes being committed in the world today and that they ought to be prevented, but that attaching this particular label is extremely dangerous. Just to put that into context, one of the main things we do at my institute is something called the European Human Rights Advocacy Centre, and on 24 February, we won on behalf of six Chechen applicants, the rst six Chechen cases against the Russian Federation in relation to the present conict in Chechnya. These cases were from the end of 1999 to 2000. There were ve women and one man, where their children and relatives were killed, and the Court of Human Rights in Strasburg held that they were murdered by the Russian state. Now, I do not think it adds anything to say that it was state terrorism. I dislike that phrase; it is a slogan. So the question here is how are human rights to be protected? We do have from July 2002 guidelines from the European Council of Ministers on how human rights are to be protected during the course of the war on terrorism, if that is what one wants to call it. The clear conclusion that we have come to is that what the United Kingdom has done with the terrorism act does not comply with those guidelines. It has already been mentioned by Stephen Grosz and others that the consequences of being put on one of these lists are absolutely draconian, with a whole series of human rights being potentially violated, such as freedom of association, freedom of expression, the right to property, the right to fair trial, and effective remedies. I think we accept that inclusion in the terrorism list is entirely arbitrary at the present moment and perhaps even through political machinations, as Lord Archer said. But the question is how, having got on to these lists, does one get off them? Here, Douwe Korff and I came to clear conclusions. First of all, you are not required to go to the Court of First Instance of the European Union. What you are required to do is to exhaust the domestic remedies in your particular country. So what we have been urging the NCRI to do, and all of the others who are affected in this way, is to return to the fray in POAC and the courts in this country. I am afraid it has been a very unpleasant experience as Stephen Grosz told us, but that is what has to be done. The reason why that has to be done, in conclusion, is that because that it is not just the PMOI. The PMOI is a very shocking and a very clear case study, but many other people and organisations are potentially caught up in this or are caught up in this at the present time, and we need to have some good precedence and good decisions at the highest level. This question has got to go to the European Court of Human Rights 26
at Strasburg, and we would say there is no better case to get there than the case of the PMOI in the British context. That is our message. Finally, in a nutshell, the way the terrorism legislation is set up in this country and in the European Union at the present time leads automatically, we would say, to serious violations of human rights, and that has to be challenged.
27
The inclusion of the PMOI in the terrorism list is scandalous

Dr. Rudi Vis, MP
Dr. Rudi Vis, an economist, has been a Member of Parliament since 1997, representing Finchley and Golders Green, Margaret Thatchers old seat. A veteran peace and human rights campaigner, Dr. Vis is a leading member of the Council of Europe. I am an optimist when it comes to Irans future, I am not talking about next week, or next month, I am talking about the years to come. And I will try to explain why I am an optimist, because in the rst instance the progress that has been made over the last few years has been excellent compared to the progress made ten or twenty years ago. It has tremendously escalated in recent years. We are all encouraged by Mrs. Rajavis speech of the third option. There has never been as clear an expression as in Mrs Rajavis speech in the European Parliament. She spoke of human rights and fundamental freedoms. She contrasted appeasement and war. She offered a third option; change brought about by the Iranian people and the Iranian resistance movement. It was an excellent speech that laid before us both the hurdles and the opportunities and the possibilities for a free and democratic Iran in the future. It is also greatly encouraging to see good United Kingdom newspapers give a better coverage of the real situation in Iran in the last year or so. The Daily Telegraph deserves a mention here, although I am a Guardian reader, but also American newspapers such as the New York Times and The Washington Post. This was not happening ve years ago. That is progress. Meetings like this were not taking place three years ago. This is all very encouraging. But the resistance movement is still on the terrorism list. This is now a priority issue and we have listened to the speeches today very carefully. It is scandalous that the PMOI is on the terrorism list. What we need to do is to stop the so-called constructive engagement of the mullahs. Let them go. They are going to do horrendous things before they are removed, but stop talking to them now and assist the PMOI, probably nancially but certainly politically. We must spread the good news about the PMOI and about its good work and let us get it off the terrorism list. My optimism is not just based on thinking that this will happen sooner rather than later. It is based on evidence. There is an awful lot of evidence of student protests and the way they are treated after being arrested is horrendous. Yet student protests are 28
markedly larger now than they have ever been before. Even President Bush seems to appreciate the difference between Iran and Iraq. He did say that is his State of the Union speech on February 2, making it clear that he will not treat Iran in the same way as he treated Iraq. Of course there remain hawks and there remain doves and they will keep ghting. I believe one of our tasks is to make the hawks a little bit more gentle and the doves a little tougher. Then we will have a large number of people who can look at the problem with the same frame of mind. But this is not just a legal problem, and here I may be in disagreement with the lawyers. It is not a legal problem at all, because I believe entirely that the legal arguments they have put forward today are justied. If this had been a legal problem, PMOI would not have been proscribed. This is a political problem and nothing else. When you have a political problem, you need friends, and so we now need to take another step forward and win more friends. And I would say it would be very good if we have studies as if the PMOI was already in power in Iran. We ought to hear from the PMOI what electoral system they will have, because we do not want to change one bunch with another bunch. We must know what their electoral system is going to be. We need to know what the powers in the centre are in the new democratic Iran and what the relationship of the power in the centre with the power in the communities or in the provinces will be. We need to know what is in their budget. We need to know in their manifesto all the things that we in this country and all other democratic countries are interested in. We must not be just hearing about hangings. I now want a press release about manifestos, about the power, how the power is devolved and how the legal framework will be shaped by the PMOI, as if they were in power now. That would be very good. And if the questions we are asking are receiving answers that we like, we will win friends, and the more friends we win, the more difcult it will be to keep the PMOI on that list. Let us spread the word.
29
Terror label against PMOI is capitulation to the dictates of the ayatollahs

Maryam Rajavi Lord Corbett: It is now my great pleasure to introduce a special guest, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran. She will be addressing our symposium via a satellite link-up. Mrs. Rajavi has devoted her life to the cause of bringing peace, freedom and democracy to the people of Iran. When the Shah was eventually overthrown and British and American support could not save his regime, the Iranian people felt that at last they could get their hands on democracy, only to have it snatched off them by the mullahs. But Mrs. Rajavi has been leading the coalition National Council of Resistance of Iran in its endeavours to reclaim that freedom. Under her leadership, women have assumed senior positions in the resistance movement and make up half of the members of the parliamentin-exile. Mrs. Rajavis Charter of Fundamental Freedoms is a platform based on secular government, free elections, guaranteed rights of citizens in accordance with international human rights instruments, gender equality and social justice. Iranians across the political spectrum have rallied to her support and she has become a unifying symbol of opposition to mullahs tyranny: It is indeed an honour for me to address this symposium of British and European jurists and lawmakers. It is appropriate that this distinguished assembly is taking place in a hall that once served as the seat of parliament during the London blitz; a bastion of resistance against fascism in the darkest hours of Britains history. Today, my people are going through the darkest hours of Irans history, under the rule of a brutal theocracy that has emerged as the scourge of our times. A week ago, millions of Iranian women and men across Iran used the occasion of ancient end-of-Persian-year celebrations to resonate the chant of freedom against the ruling mullahs across the country. They again displayed the resolve of the Iranian people for change in Iran. Like those sailing into uncharted seas in lonely nights, the brave Iranians resisting the barbaric despots have a right to wonder if their cry for freedom is nding an echo among men and women of conscience around the world. Yes is the answer, as clearly shown today by the conuence of law and politics in your symposium and your emphasis on the need to distinguish between terrorism and legitimate resistance. 30
Let history remember that the conscience of Europe and Britain rejects deals over the rights of the Iranian people to resist religious tyranny. Today, appeasement of the ruling ayatollahs in Iran is thwarting the will of the Iranian people for change. Twenty-seven years ago, as the Shahs regime was going through its nal weeks, the then-British Foreign Secretary declared that Britain must stand by the side of her ally. Today, in an echo of failed policies of the past, the British Foreign Secretary has become the most frequent high-prole Western visitor to Tehran, having made ve trips in two years. The Foreign Secretary was quoted by the state-run media in Tehran as taking pride in the fact that as the Home Secretary, he had proscribed the main Iranian opposition group, the Peoples Mojahedin. He took the lead in putting the terror tag on the Mojahedin in the European Union and personally informed the Iranian government ahead of the war in Iraq that camps belonging to the Iranian Mojahedin would be bombed. Oddly enough, the freedom-ghters bombed in those camps had received the support of a majority of members of Parliament in Britain in their endeavour to end religious tyranny in Iran. It is to be remembered that the Iranian resistance movement had been supported by the Labour Party and its leadership for 15 years and invited to Labours annual conferences. We continue to enjoy strong grassroots support in the Labour Party and among its parliamentarians. When a majority of members of the House of Commons and more than 100 Peers note in their joint statement that supporting the Iranian Mojahedin is indispensable to the ght against terrorism, why does the British government continue to proscribe the Mojahedin? The Home Secretary acknowledged in February 2001 in a written note to Parliament that the Mojahedin never attacked Western or British interests. Why did Britain join France and Germany to promise the mullahs that if they were to limit their nuclear program, the European Union would continue to keep the Mojahedin on the terrorism list? Was this not a travesty of justice and the ght against terrorism? One must particularly note that all members of the Mojahedin in Iraq have been recognised by the Coalition member states, including Britain, as protected persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention and that the US government announced that it had found no grounds to bring charges against any members of the Mojahedin. So how can one justify keeping this label? The terrorist label against the Iranian Resistance is not only a move against an opposition movement; it is capitulation to the dictates of the ayatollahs and a barrier to change in Iran. The signal this label sends to the mullahs is that they can continue the repression, the export of terrorism and their nuclear ambitions with impunity. And it tells my fellow Iranians that the West is standing by the despots who rule them and is opposed to change in Iran. 31
The mullahs use this label to justify the continuing executions, torture and agrant violations of human rights in Iran. When they demanded the bombing of the combatants of freedom, this label was again their pretext. This unjust designation is a grave breach of the principles of democracy and human rights. But it is more than that. Its a serious political blunder. As millions of Iranians cry for freedom, the end of mullahs tyranny is appearing in the horizon. It is time for change. Appeasement has exacted a high price from the Iranian people and will continue to do so, but it cannot prevent the inevitable change. The just, and wise, policy is to stand on the side of the Iranian people and their desire for democratic change. Today, the position of the Iranian Resistance in the past quarter-century that the clerical regime is the font of Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism has been vindicated. Western ofcials increasingly concede that the Iranian people are yearning for freedom, that the ruling theocracy lacks any popular support and legitimacy, and that there will be no peace, stability, and progress in the Middle East without democracy in Iran. We have before us the experience of two decades of appeasement, particularly during Khatamis presidency. This policy has only led to the strengthening of the most hard-line factions of the ruling clique. At the same time, no one wants a war or a foreign military intervention. The only real and effective option is to support democratic change by the Iranian people and Resistance. This is the very option I raised in my speech at the European Parliament in December. If through continuing appeasement, the West were to allow the mullahs to advance their policies, the nuclear program and meddling in Iraq, war would become inevitable. By virtue of its profound roots in Irans culture and society, with its vast and wellorganized network inside Iran and the NLA, as well as its political alternative, the National Council of Resistance, the Iranian Resistance represents the best and the last chance for democratic change in Iran. By committing itself to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Iranian Resistance is seeking the establishment of a pluralist democracy that advocates the separation of church and state, gender equality, and the elimination of all discrimination among ethnic and religious minorities. In order to rebuild our devastated country, we want private investment and seek to create a situation whereby our experts abroad would return to Iran. We want equal relationships with all countries and the spread of peace, democracy and security to the rest of the world. As the backbone of this Resistance, the Peoples Mojahedin Organisation of Iran has espoused a democratic and tolerant interpretation of Islam and emerged as the 32
best cultural and political answer to Islamic fundamentalism, which Irans rulers have attempted to spread to the rest of the world, especially Iraq. The Resistances parliament, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, has been the most enduring political coalition in Irans modern history. With women making up just over half of its members, the NCRI includes the representatives of different political tendencies and all of Irans various religious and ethnic groups. It has established itself as a symbol of unity and tolerance for the free and tolerant Iran of tomorrow. For this reason, the mullahs know that the only way to forestall change is to fetter the Resistance movement. They see the continuing terrorist designation of the Mojahedin as their strongest line of defence against the tide of change. This is the continuation of appeasement, and appeasement, as history attests, paves the way to war. One day, the proponents of appeasement sacriced Czechoslovakia to appease a certain Mr. Hitler. In the words of Sir Winston Churchill, between war and dishonour, they chose dishonour. But they ended up with war. Today, sacricing the Iranian Resistance as a price for rapprochement with the mullahs has the stench of a new Munich. Thats why I believe your consensus in the face of this injustice is not just in defence of democracy, human rights and the sanctity of law, but it is also a serious initiative to prevent war. On behalf of the victims of one of the most brutal and suppressive regimes in modern history, I thank you for your dignied stance in defence of the Iranian people against a great injustice. Dear friends, The tree of liberty in Iran has been replenished with the blood of 120,000 of my countrys bravest sons and daughters. Today, millions of Iranians crying for freedom need your support. They need each and every one of you to do whatever in your power to remove the terror label on the Iranian Resistance. In the name of justice, humanity and peace, I urge you to answer their call.
33
Iranian Resistance is a major ally in confronting mullahs dangerous fundamentalism

Lord Corbett of Castle Vale Lord Corbett of Castle Vale was a Member of Parliament from 1974 to 2001 and Chairman of the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee. He was a Labour front bench spokesman on broadcasting and media, home affairs, and disabled peoples rights. Lord Corbett is chair of the All Party Penal Affairs Group. He was given an honorary Doctor of Laws degree by the University of Birmingham in recognition of his services to the West Midlands community. I have the privilege of chairing the British Committee for Iran Freedom, and as Mrs. Rajavi has just reminded us, the biggest half of the elected members of the House of Commons are signed up on the cause of Iranian freedom, and about 100 members of the House of Lords. So I hope when the Foreign Secretary gets off to Iran to try to change their habits a waste of money at that, but never mind I hope that occasionally it might cross his mind that he does not speak for the majority in the parliament where he also sits. The presence here this morning of so many diplomats, lawyers, human rights activists, womens organisations, and churches is a testament to the widespread and growing concerns over what is going on in Iran. Our world and that region need an Iran which celebrates its great past with a determination to enjoy a much greater freedom in partnership with us all. A partner state, not a pariah state; a democratic state, not a despotic state; a state run by people who are elected, not by those who are elevated in secret and unaccountable for the decisions they take. This is the new Iran that its people, the world and the region need. On 8 February this year, the Prime Minister said that there was an Iranian organisation, which certainly does sponsor terrorism. There is no doubt about that at all, he said. Within days the Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told Al-Arabia television that there was an Iranian organisation which actively sponsors terrorist groups opposing a peaceful settlement of the dispute between Israel and Palestine. I wonder which Iranian organisation both the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary were talking about. It should have been the leaders of the theocracy in Iran, who stole freedom from its people and who manipulate a pretend parliament whose decisions can and are ignored by unelected clerics; by a regime that uses terror at home against its people as much as it sponsors it abroad. So why wasnt this organisation, this regime, named by the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary? Why have they not had their 34
terror tag hung around the necks of these real and continuing terrorists? It was the same Jack Straw, then Home Secretary, who told Parliament four years ago that the Peoples Mojahedin Organisation of Iran had no acknowledged presence in the United Kingdom, and went on to add that it had not attacked UK or Western interests in the Middle East. What a great contribution to combating terrorism! You put on the list an organisation that is not active in the United Kingdom, and has no record of causing trouble to British or Western interests in the Middle East. Peter Archer was right; this was wholly, mainly, and only a political decision. It was said to me by someone close to drawing up that list of so-called terror organisations, the only reason that the PMOI was put on it was because if it was not on that list, it would have been hard to justify the inclusion of two or three other organisations. Honesty and integrity in practice! And if Jack Straw wants to deny that, he knows my telephone number. How strange, then, that those that the government named as sponsoring terrorism are not given the terror tag. How can this happen? This government, despite the latest acknowledgment of the mullahs murderous ways, believes it can persuade these clerics to start behaving like democrats. This government overlooks the clerical regimes murder of 30,000 people, yes, 30,000 people, in the single dark year of 1988; ignores the execution of young men and women, many barely in their teens, hung from the end of cranes in public, others having their limbs amputated, others having their eyes gouged out; ignores the fact that this is a regime which until lately has quite regularly seen the stoning to death of women. All these charges and many more stand proved against the mullahs. The idea said the British government was to manipulate the mullahs into behaving responsibly as citizens of a small planet in a dangerous region. Lets see what has happened. Mrs. Rajavi reminded us to this policy of appeasement, and as she said, we in the United Kingdom have more experience with appeasement than probably any other country in the world, and we know where appeasement led us to. Sale-no-Mobarak! It is this New Year which the people in Iran are celebrating in Mirdamad Street, only because the mullahs have stopped them from using Mohseni Square, where the clerics thugs use batons and tear gas at will. And Happy New Year, I am delighted to say, not for the mullahs, because, at the encouragement of the Iranian Resistance, people laced their celebrations with dissent, and as we know the clerics do not tolerate dissent. One student, I have his name but will not use it, said, We hate their brand of Islam, because it spills blood. They keep people backward. Young people now think. What does this Iranian student want? He said, Democracy, with a separation between religion and politics. Not just in Tehran, but in towns and cities all over Iran, these demonstrations were taking place with these demands for peace and freedom. I come back to the question, asked by the call for change of those celebrating the 35
New Year in Iran: what has the UK and the EU got out of this appeasement? They have simply given the mullahs more time to develop their nuclear weapons. That is where this so-called constructive engagement has got us. As our government tries to mollify the mullahs, they demand more. The price they asked for better relations with the EU was that the Iranian Resistance should be proscribed and its activities restricted. It was the mullahs who demanded that the rally planned in France last month be banned, and in its eternal shame, the French government went along with that. It was the mullahs who demanded that the rally, when it was moved to Berlin, should not take place, and shamefully the German government went along with that. The EU Big-3 should be ashamed of themselves. Happily, the German courts took a different view and the rally went ahead. The lesson is obvious for those who want to see it. Dont mollify the mullahs; they always want more. They are strangers and traitors to the truth. After the resistance revealed their secret nuclear weapons programme in August 2002, both the UK government and President Bush publicly acknowledged where the information had come from. Then the mullahs signed up to comply with their international nuclear commitments and said that they had admitted everything that was to be known about their nuclear weapons programme. That was not true. They lied and cheated and the Resistance found that there were other sites undeclared by the mullahs and kept from the knowledge of the International Atomic Energy Agency. In November, they signed up again to restrict their nuclear programme but the experts estimate that they are within one or two years of having the ability to produce a nuclear weapon to ride on the back of long-range rockets already in place in Iran. Tell me, Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, what ground do you have for trusting them? That is all we need, is it not: a lethal cocktail of fundamentalism by those who sponsor terrorism, plus nuclear weapons. Osama Bin-Laden and his copycat friends around the world will rejoice at that prospect. There is another way, as Mrs Rajavi has just reminded us. The response to tyranny and dictatorship is not violence; it is democracy. It is the vote. The Iranian Resistance is a major ally in confronting the mullahs dangerous fundamentalism. It invites the Iranian people demanding change to work with it to achieve a state built on respect for human rights and democracy, where the mullahs are in the mosques and freely elected politicians are in the ministries. This New Year in Iran is not just a challenge to the mullahs. It challenges the whole of the world community, on behalf of those millions in Iran, who look to us to support them, rather than the mullahs. The challenge is this: if the clerics really want reform, why not put it to the test in UN-supervised free elections? This is what Mrs Rajavi describes as a real alternative to anyone thinking of a military intervention in such a powder-keg area. This is not really a choice for the mullahs; it is a demand, because you know and I know and the people of Iran know that Iran will be free. 36
Let us end the hypocrisy and de-list the PMOI

Lord Clarke of Hampstead
Lord Clarke of Hampstead, a leading trade unionist and former Chairman on the Labour Party, has been a consistent voice in defence of the Iranian peoples rights and in support of the Iranian Resistance. My purpose in being here today is to remind the people of this country of what is going on, in the name of their government, abroad. It has been mentioned that Jack Straw was the Home Secretary when the PMOI was put on the list of terrorist organisations, or organisations to be prescribed. I am pleased to say that I and a number of others were rst over to see him, protesting about that inclusion; the inclusion of an organisation that had no track record of doing anything wrong or transgressing any laws in this country; an organisation that simply was, as Robin has just said, a makeweight for what the government was trying to do on this nuclear programme argument. I am a socialist and I am proud of it. I am a Labour Party member and always will be and I am of proud of that, but I cannot say I am proud of my government in what they have done, over these last few years since elected, in the case of Iran. It is very difcult for those of us who actually advocated co-operation with the Mojahedin and with the National Council of Resistance over a number of years. I had the privilege of being the Chairman of the Labour Partys International Committee and Chairman of the Party, and on those occasions I would say sometimes to two thousand delegates, Up in the balcony, there are those who are with us today, who are ghting for freedom, justice, and democracy in their home country of Iran. And the conference would rise and clap, including the people on the platform, who today go and bow the knee at the mullahs in Tehran. That makes me cross, because when we went to see Jack Straw, I reminded him of that. As Home Secretary, he turned to me and said, Tony, we are in government now. Can you believe it, the hypocrisy? It is very, very difcult; you do not want to be critical of a party that you have supported and a government that you have worked for so hard for all your life. But it has to be said, because to do otherwise, you join the hypocrisy of those who are perpetrating the outrage that is going on. When I went to see Madam Rajavi many years ago, I was impressed. I was again impressed this morning at the eloquence, the feeling, and the determination of this 37
very courageous lady, who leads so many brave people in this ght. We have heard our Foreign Minister, Bill Rammell, say that the Iranian regime supports terrorism. We have heard the Prime Minister say it. President Bush is saying it. We do not need to be told these things. What we do need is to remove the PMOI from the terrorism list. I for one do not subscribe to the view that we should not have the question of the hangings and the executions brought forward and put in front of the people of this country. However dreadful these pictures are of young people being hanged, I hope we will continue to do so, because there are people in this country who do not understand what is going on. They just see the diplomatic manoeuvrings of going backwards and forwards on this business about the nuclear programme. Our job is to make sure the argument is taken one step further to explain why the PMOI does need to exist, and why it needs to have the tag taken away from it, because the PMOI are the voice of the people who are trying to end the terrible things that are going on. I cannot trade legal interpretations with esteemed lawyers, whom I respect and who have done so much work. I cannot give you any legal advice. All I can say to you is that we have to redouble our efforts to show up the hypocrisy and the double standards that apply, and end the folly of appeasing the wicked rulers of Iran. We are going to have a general election soon. I think it would be a good idea if we started asking the candidates where they stood on the proscribed list, because many would not even know what we are talking about. I was privileged to go to Brussels in September to address a rally of literally tens of thousands of Iranians calling for what we take for granted; the right to speak, the right to organise, the right to agitate for change. Then in February, the French government banned their rally in Paris and the programme was shifted to Berlin. Again, tens of thousands of people made the effort to call out for freedom for their country. What is going on in Iran is barbaric and despicable. We have an election coming in Britain. We have to work hard to make sure that one day the people of Iran will have the right to vote in a free and fair election, that they will be able to elect a truly representative government, and that they will be able to say what they want for their country. We do not know how long it would take. But I know it can be done, if there is the political will to do it. I would urge all of my parliamentary friends, and the people at large in this country, to start speaking out for those people who have suffered, and continue to suffer, so much injustice
38
Inclusion of PMOI in terrorism list was a gross, outrageous abuse

Geoffrey Bindman
Geoffrey Bindman is senior partner of Bindman and Partners, a rm he founded in 1974. As noted by The Legal 500, Bindman & Partners remains [Britains] premier civil liberties rm. It has a wideranging practice covering most aspects of human rights and civil liberties cases and has a strength in depth that other rms nd hard to match. Geoffrey Bindman has specialised in civil liberty and human rights issues and has acted in many leading cases. He is a Visiting Professor of Law at University College London and has represented the International Commission of Jurists, the International Bar Association, Amnesty International, and other bodies in human rights missions in several countries. In 1994, he was a United Nations Observer at the rst democratic elections in South Africa. I would like to say what a privilege it is and has been to make a small contribution to helping to challenge the prohibition of the Peoples Mojahedin Organisation of Iran under the Terrorism Act. My colleague, Stephen Grosz, has explained in some detail the sad progress of the legal attempts that we made to have the prohibition removed and I do not want to add to that. But what seems to me very important is that although I accept, as Dr. Rudi Vis was saying, that essentially the prohibition was political and has a political source, and that the challenge and ultimate removal of the prohibition is likely to be the result of political action, rather than legal action, I do wish to express my shame and sadness that our legal system has degenerated in certain aspects, so that it is not capable of providing a just result, when such a gross and outrageous abuse and error has been perpetrated in including the PMOI on that prohibited list and labeling it as a terrorist organization. Unfortunately, what appears to have happened is that our government, under the pressure of threats of terrorism, mostly from religious fundamentalists throughout the world, has introduced legislation which violates and overrides fundamental principles of natural justice, with the result that when serious errors are made, such as the proscription of the PMOI, the legal system is unable to correct them. One particularly crucial error, which has been repeated in the latest Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005 that has just gone through Parliament after many heated debates, is that these acts allow an adverse decision to be made and harm to be done to an organization or a person without that organization or person having the opportunity of 39
knowing what the case is against them and meeting that case. As Stephen Grosz pointed out, one of the features of our attempts to challenge the prohibition in the present situation was that we could not nd out the basis on which the Home Secretary made his decision. If you cannot know the evidence, you cannot challenge the evidence. If you cannot challenge the evidence, how can you persuade any impartial body that the decision that has been made was a wrong one? There is, therefore, a fundamental aw in the legal process in that there is not by any means an adequate system of challenge to the decision to put the PMOI on the prohibited list. Now, does that mean that we should abandon the law altogether? I am afraid that we did give up on the law at that point. But I hope that it will not be said that the law and the rule of law are no longer relevant to getting this prohibition removed. Professor Bowring urged that further efforts be made to bring these issues before the European Court of Human Rights, and I would support that. It seems to me that we, as British lawyers and politicians, owe it to ourselves not to allow an unjust legal system to continue. We have a duty to ourselves and to the public and everyone affected to continue to ght against legal provisions which are unjust, unfair and which violate the fundamental principles of natural justice. We should not give up on the law. We should try and nd new ways of challenging the decision, not only political, which we should certainly do, but we should also nd new ways of pursuing legal challenges and hopefully doing something on a much broader scale to put right what are to my mind gross defects in our legal system, which have been brought about in an attempt to respond to terrorism, but which in fact win the terrorists battles for them by undermining our basic commitments to the rule of law and democracy.
40
Right to resist oppressive regimes must be recognised in terrorism legislation

Mark Muller Mark Muller, head of 10-11 Grays Inn Square Chambers, is vicechairman of Bar Human Rights Committee. Can I rst of all extend my thanks to Lord Corbett and Lord Archer for this invitation to speak to you. One of the speakers said this morning that the proscription of PMOI was a political question rather than a legal question. This is not just a political question, it is both a legal and political question, because the politicians have politicized the law and so this ght has to be fought on both counts. How we describe ourselves both socially and politically has an important effect on how we treat each other. One can cast ones mind back to Senator McCarthy and see just how destructive the consequences can be once you are placed on a list. This is true in the case of the terrorism labels and we have heard from Stephen Grosz how the UK Terrorism Act sties all forms of an organisations ability to communicate freely and to meet. We have heard from Prof. Bowering about the EUs terrorism list that although symbolic, also has fundamental effects because it gives the nod to member states to proscribe those organisations domestically. The purpose is to ostracise, to censor, to criminalise and to silence unfortunate groups on the list. I say unfortunate advisedly, because it is clear that whether you are on the list has more to do with politics rather than the application of law, more to do with geo-political relations rather than national security, and more to do with the heightened anxiety of terrorism after 9/11. That there are serious concerns about the Terrorism Act, there can be no doubt. Stephan Grosz and I separately challenged the Terrorism Act before the High Court. Now we have heard from Stephen how in fact the Home Secretary was given a very broad discretion and had not provided any procedural safeguards. But more important than that, more important than the broad denition of terrorism, was the failure of this government to include any recognition or any allowance for those groups that were ghting undemocratic and oppressive regimes. Or indeed to recognise that there are legitimate circumstances where a group engaged in a lawful armed conict in exercise of the internationally recognised principle of self determination of peoples should have been recognised. On both these counts, Lord Justice Richards said these cases were arguable. Why is it that this government gives such a very broad discretion with no commitment to 41
democracy or recognition of international legal laws? Why was the government so impelled to lump together terrorists, separatists, liberationist and resistance movements without so much as a debate in a take-it-or-leave-it Order? After all, this was six months before 9/11. There was no state of emergency. There was no heightened anxiety about terrorism. I believe that Terrorism Act 2000 was part of a wider process that preceded 9/11, in which there is an attack upon any opposition to the principle of the sovereignty and violability of nation states. Before the Terrorism Bill came into existence, there was a very important meeting in Egypt held by President Clinton, attended by this government and many other states. That meeting resolved to cooperate together to stop each others territories from being used by foreign opposition groups to mount ideological and political attacks in other states. But in order for those certain states to ensure cooperation with other states it was necessary to give the widest degree of latitude when it came to the business of proscription. That is why you do not nd any protection for the right of self-determination. That is why you do not nd any protection for those who are struggling for democracy to have a right of defense under the terrorism law. The Secretary of State, when he banned the PMOI, stated this in his decision: The Home Secretary has taken into full account the assertion that Mojahedin Khalq is involved in legitimate struggle against repressive regime and has no choice but to resort to armed resistance. He notes, too, the claim that armed resistance is concentrated against military and security targets within Iran only. The Home Secretary does not accept, however, any right to resort to acts of terrorism whatever the motivation. The reference to acts clearly means the use of force. According to the Secretary of State, it is simply impermissible for any movement to deploy force against another state in any circumstances, including those provided by international law. One might have reminded the Home Secretary about the preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: It is essential, if man is not be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected under the rule of law. I think this conference should remind the new Home Secretary of Mr. Blairs admission on 8 February that Iran certainly does sponsor terrorism. The truth is that since that Cairo meeting, nation states have traded resistance movements like carbon emissions in the Quetta Agreement. Too often they have found themselves on the lists not because of a judicial or forensic exercise and not because of any universally applied objective criteria about what constitutes a public threat, but because of geo-political horse trading. That is why Clinton offered the PMOI up as a gesture of good will to Khatami. That is why in other cases I have dealt with, like the PKK, they ban the PKK and other movements even though they have been on ceasere for seven years. Far from being instruments to combat terrorism, these lists are tools in foreign policy. 42
Now why all this matters to citizens of EU? It matters because in fact when you look around at all the violence around the world, much of this emanates from places where there is no democratic outlet or dissent, or any protection for those which wish to protect prosecuted peoples and minorities. There has existed for the last forty years a dangerous lacuna in the political and human rights international system which has consistently failed to protect peoples and stateless peoples and minorities who have simply sought some sort of democratic relief. Instead, the international system has tried to uphold the inviolability of the system of state sovereignty, except where the Security Council invokes Chapter Seven. It is this failure to provide any legal or political avenues to those resistance movements who are trying to ght for democratic rights which must be stopped and the Terrorism Act 2000 simply entrenches this process by failing to distinguish between resistance movements and true terrorists. It is therefore deeply ironic that the international community, in trying to tackle terrorism by simply and continually concentrating on the right of sovereign states to the exclusion of all other rights, actually promotes it. This is why this conference is so important today. It is not just the obsessions of liberal rights activists and lawyers. It is in our national and international interest to ensure that this type of legislation is scrutinized to the utmost and to ensure that principles like the right to self determination and to take up arms against oppressive and undemocratic regimes are fully recognised in terrorist legislation. Otherwise, the carnage will continue. Otherwise, we are going to be confronted with further and further violence. If this conference can send out any message, it is that the UN international system which upholds state sovereignty better start getting used to international human rights, providing political space for resistance movements and ordinary people to have their political and social claims heard.
43
PMOI blacklisting has put thousands in jeopardy in EU states

Wolfgang Kaleck
Wolfgang Kaleck, president of the Association of Republican Lawyers in Germany, is a high-prole human rights lawyer and a specialist in international criminal law who has successfully represented victims of repressive regimes in Argentina, Chile, Serbia and other countries. He is the author, with Dr. Jrg Arnold of Max Planck Institute in Freibourg, of a legal opinion on the inclusion of the PMOI in the EU terrorism list. Terrorism is a political concept which pretends to be legal. Many important points have been raised in the discussion this morning, combining legal and political arguments. As a German criminal lawyer and as a European human rights lawyer, I would like to comment on some of the legal aspects. If I had to propose a project for a class of law students, I would ask them to study the inclusion of the PMOI in the European Unions terrorism list and discover as many violations of procedural rights and of substantial human rights as possible. This would be a very fruitful and intense work that would keep them busy for months. I say this, because my colleague, Dr. Jrg Arnold, and I did some research into this very issue when we wrote a legal opinion that was presented to the International Conference in Jurists in Paris last November. I do not want to repeat here the very long and sound arguments against the inclusion of the PMOI in the terrorism list. The total lack of procedural transparency, the total lack of judicial control, and everything else that was mentioned here by speakers who were focusing on the PMOI inclusion in the British list, were also discussed at the European level. There is a long list of articles of the European Convention on Human Rights and community laws that have been violated in the blacklisting of the PMOI. In addition, I agree with Professor Bowrings comments on the lack of a clear and consensual denition of terrorism. I want to underline the very important conclusions that Professor Eric David, president of the Centre for International Law at Brussels University, drew at the end of his legal opinion on the terrorism tag on the PMOI. He wrote, Considered separately and outside the Iranian context, the armed actions of the PMOI in the past can seemingly fall under certain denitions of terrorism. But placed within the framework of the Iranian situation, they are acts of war and not acts of terrorism. Professor David presents a lucid argument, noting that the Iranian regime can be 44
qualied as one of the greatest violators of human rights; a regime which has executed over 120,000 people, which has imprisoned tens of thousands of persons, which has tortured tens of thousands of persons. It can be said that a regime which implements this type of policy of terror is truly terrorist. Such a regime obviously commits an ongoing aggression against the portion of the population which does not conform to its wishes. And permanent aggression against a portion of the population is indeed an armed conict in the form of open confrontation, even if it is in the form of simple arbitrary detention, torture and extrajudiciary executions. Professor David points out that the two criteria for armed conict as opposed to terrorism under International Humanitarian Law, have been met in the case of the PMOIs conict with the Iranian government, namely an open confrontation in the form of an ongoing aggression on the part of the state against a section of the population, and the existence of a structured organization which assumes responsibility for its actions and which could even be held responsible for any excesses committed in the framework of its actions. He therefore concluded that the PMOIs actions against the Iranian regime were indeed acts of war and must not be labelled as terrorist acts. I think Professor Davids legal opinion is a signicant contribution to this debate and is well worth reading. I wish to report to you some of the consequences that have owed in Germany from the inclusion of the PMOI in the EU list, because while our discussions here seem to focus mainly on theoretical questions, in Germany we have seen the adverse effects of the blacklisting of the PMOI on the lives of individuals and curtailment of civil liberties and human rights at the heart of Europe. A case in point was the ban on a demonstration planned by Iranian exiles in Europe on February 10 this year to protest human rights violations in Iran. On January 10, the authorities in Berlin authorized a demonstration at Brandenburg Gate against human rights violations and nuclear weapons programme in Iran. For about a month, the Berlin police discussed the details of the demonstration with the organizers and everything was agreed. Then on the night of 9-10 February, hours before the demonstration was due to begin, the German secret service sent a fax to the Berlin police and at 7:13 am, the German police informed the organizers that the demonstration had been banned. But lawyers acting on behalf of demonstrators immediately sought an injunction from the administrative court of Berlin. A panel of three judges overturned the police ban and allowed the rally by the thousands of Iranians who had come to Berlin from across Europe. This case showed how secret services intervene directly in the democratic process. But it also demonstrated the dire consequences of the EU blacklisting of the PMOI, which manifested itself, in this case, as a violation of the freedom of expression and freedom of assembly of thousands of Iranians and EU citizens. Another very serious issue is the case of some 30 Iranian political refugees in 45
Germany, whose refugee status is to be withdrawn simply because they are supposed to be members of the PMOI. Here, therefore, we are not talking only about freedom of assembly, freedom of association, and other fundamental human rights. We are talking about the right to life and the right to be protected from torture, because it is abundantly clear that if such persons have their refugee status annulled and sent back to Iran, they would face certain torture and execution. An expert colleague of mine estimates that several hundred persons in Germany are facing such a fate. In all of these cases, the governments argument is that the PMOI is on the EU terrorism list. For me, therefore, there is no argument over whether this is a political or legal ght. For us as lawyers, there is an obligation to assist these affected people, to assist these victims of the so-called ght against terrorism. We have no other choice as lawyers, as jurists and as politicians. As my colleague, Mark Muller, said earlier, we are entering a new era and a new world order, the world order of states. So it falls on us to defend the concept of human rights in the face of a single-minded focus on security which, for the moment, seems to dominate not only the UK, not only the European Union, but the whole world.
46
Proscription of PMOI was a good-will gesture to Tehran

Lord Dholakia of Waltham Brooks
Lord Dholakia of Waltham Brooks is the deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords and the former President of the Liberal Democratic Party. He was front bench Spokesman on Home Affairs to the Liberal Democrats. He is a member of the House of Lords Appointments Commission. It is almost an impossible task to follow some of the key messages that you have gathered earlier on, including that from Mrs. Rajavi; over 120,000, if not more people, slaughtered. Picture after picture that appears shakes us of the way inhumanity raises its ugly face in Iran. There is no question that fundamentalism must be defeated wherever it raises its head. And Iran is no exception. I have always believed in peoples power. We have seen it in Eastern Europe. We have seen what can happen in the Ukraine. And we are seeing that in other parts of the world and I have no doubt at all that the people of Iran will rise to make sure that they have a democratic institution that they can be proud of. For years European policymakers had been deluded into thinking that a moderate faction would come to power within the clerical regime in Iran. It is now clear that this argument is awed, as has been demonstrated by various speakers earlier on. The Islamic fundamentalist theocracy has shown that it has neither the desire nor the capacity to change. But the worst part is that the West has shown very little inuence in what is going on in Iran today. My partys record on human rights and liberty is second to none and I am delighted that as far as Iran is concerned, that position will never be compromised. As part of the engagement policy, Iran has received incentive after incentive. Europe turned a blind eye to human rights abuses since 2002. It has failed to submit a resolution to the United Nations Human Rights Commission to censure Irans appalling record. Senior Iranian ofcials have been warmly received in European capitals. The European Union has agreed to blacklist Irans main opposition, the Peoples Mojahedin, as a goodwill gesture to Tehran. This is something that we need to look at and examine again. The mullahs have taken all of the carrots and are still asking for more, without giving anything back. Our soft approach is being perceived in Iran as a sign of weakness, prompting the mullahs to continue their hard-line stance. Indeed, ve visits, as already 47
explained by Mrs. Rajavi and Lord Corbett, by Mr. Straw to Tehran, has made him the most frequent high prole Western visitor to the Islamic Republic. But it has done nothing to moderate Irans unruly behaviour. It is about time that message went to Jack Straw. The ayatollahs thumbed their noses at us, when they unlawfully paraded eight handcuffed and blindfolded British sailors in front of TV cameras last June. But the reaction from the Foreign Ofce was so mild that it even surprised some Iranian ofcials. Britain was and remains in an excellent position to bring about transatlantic consensus on Iran over a wise and peaceful resolution. We need a rm policy that will be tough on the mullahs human rights violations, terrorism and nuclear proliferation. We must express support for the democratic aspirations of the Iranian people and their Resistance movement. This is the only way to show the mullahs that the world will not tolerate their unruly behaviour. In the end, we pray that politics and religion will be separated in Iran, that the Iranian people will be able to have their genuinely elected representatives in their Parliament, and that an accountable and democratic government will be established. I believe that it is perfectly right for these aspirations to materialize. Justice is on the side of the people of Iran. Let us not look back, but continue this struggle until Iran is liberated from the hands of the mullahs.
48
Britains reputation as Mother of All Democracies is at stake

Imran Khan
Imran Khan is arguably one of the most high prole solicitors in Britain, having spent 10 years representing the family at the centre of the Stephen Lawrence Enquiry - Britains rst private prosecution for murder. Imran Khans work led to the recommendations of the McPherson Report, a landmark in British Race Relations. Once elected Legal Personality of the Year, he is now a partner in his own rm in Central London and the immigration law representative on the Law Society Council. About ve years ago, a client of mine called Ali Al-Sa hijacked a plane in Kabul to escape the tyranny of the Taliban regime at the time. He was part of a secular movement opposed to the Taliban and apparently the organisation had been found out and he and his fellow colleagues would have been killed had they not hijacked this airplane. The airplane ew out of the Afghan airspace and eventually reached Stansted Airport, on the outskirts of London. Mr Ali al-Sa and his colleagues were arrested and charged and faced trial. The judge of the trial, Mr. Justice Buttereld, likened the regime of Taliban to the Nazis in the Second World War. When Mr. Sa was giving evidence as to why he chose England to escape to, he said it was the mother of all democracies. What he said was something commonly shared by a large number of people across the world that Britain, and English law in particular, have a foundation based upon democracy, fairness, and accountability, all of them issues that lawyers hold dear and which systems and politicians nd difcult to keep as time goes on. For his sins, Mr Sa was convicted and sent to prison, but luckily for him, the rule of law did apply and on appeal, his conviction was quashed and he is now a free man together with his colleagues. But in the years since that trial, the term the mother of all democracies seems to be ringing hollow, given the acts being enacted. In the past, we had the experience of constant fear in the Irish community as a result of anti-terrorist laws, but that fear has been replicated in refugee communities today by the introduction of what has been the most far-reaching, draconian piece of legislation the UK has ever seen. What this act did, in my view, was to bring into sharp relief that which was taken place in a much more covert way over the proceeding years. In one dramatic process, whole refugee communities in the UK came to be 49
criminalised and it has not helped when a junior minister a few weeks ago tarnished a whole community because of the actions of one or two in that community. Under the Act, it is not just the use of violence that is criminalised, but the use or threat of any action involving violence to people or property or serious risk to health and safety, which is designed to inuence any government or intimidate members of the public anywhere in the world for political, religious or ideological reasons. That, apparently, is UKs denition of terrorism, despite the fact that there is no universally agreed denition at this point. International conferences have not been able to achieve a precise denition. As we all know, one persons terrorist is another persons freedom-ghter. We need only look at U.S. foreign policy, for example. Was it an act of terrorism, which led to then-U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright to say in 1996 that half a million Iraqi children dying as result of sanctions against Iraq was a very hard choice? Was it an act of terrorism which resulted in millions being killed in the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, the Middle East, and so on? The list goes on and we have heard about the numbers being killed in Iran. The anti-terrorism legislation in the UK does not only talk about destabilizing the health or safety of this country, but any other country. This act is thus a gift to tyrannical regimes, from where refugees are eeing in the rst place. If you support democracy and oppose tyranny, you are persecuted in your own country, so you ee. You arrive in the UK as a refugee and protest at what your government is doing as best as you can. What happens to you? Detention and criminalisation. The effect of the legislation is indeed terrifying, as it is intended to be. It is intended to frighten people individually and collectively, so among the decisions that people have had to make in the last few years for the rst time in this country was whether to continue to exercise the right to speak out, to assemble, to associate, to demonstrate freely. Minority and refugee communities that have been put into a straight-jacket of fear and those who will most experience this fear are those who have already demonstrated intense courage in opposing tyranny in their own countries. Now, legitimate attempts to achieve democracy in their own countries by their actions are being intentionally stied. The effect of the legislation is to make a mockery of the principles of democracy in this country and certainly makes the prospects of democracy in other countries much more difcult. The key philosophical and legal question this moment in time is this: on what grounds and in what circumstances should the state be able to criminalise the activities of its citizens? Lord Wolf, one of the most senior judges in this country, said about a year ago that we should not forget the mistakes that were made during the Second World War, when the so-called aliens were round up and detained without trial, something which was 50
until recently permissible when someone was suspected of so-called international terrorism. So if you are a foreign national, you could be locked up indenitely without trial and on evidence that could not be brought out in the open. Interestingly, this would not apply if you held a British passport. The effect is best described by a journalist who stated that it was like the Home Secretary deciding that most muggers were black and so all suspicious-looking black people in the area would be rounded up, and no whites. While legislation only affected and continues to affect foreigners, refugees and asylum-seekers, the majority of Britons would feel safe in our beds. In doing so, we fail the test set by Martin Luther King, who said that the ultimate test of the people is not where they stand in the moment of comfort and convenience, but where they stand in the time of challenge and controversy. Today, with this symposium, we are at that point. What does that mean for the PMOI? It has been labeled terrorist. As Professor Bowering said, the PMOIs situation is contrary to articles of the European Convention on Human Rights. There are three basic strands which I would put forward: not just the political and the legal, but also campaigning in the media. These are the three strands of any successful case, in my view. Today we start a process where we have the lawyers and the politicians coming together. What I would say is that if we are going to successfully de-prescribe the PMOI, the third strand, a campaign in the media throughout the UK, needs to be implemented. So today I am glad to see the lawyers and the politicians have come together. I hope that those members of the media who are here today can successfully advertise and publicise the fantastic work that has been going on.
51
Our government should be thanking the PMOI for revealing the dark side of what is happening in Iran
Win Grifths, MP Win Grifths, a Member of Parliament for Bridgend since 1987, is a former MEP for South Wales, former Vice President of the European Parliament, former Labour minister and, for a very long time, an outspoken critic of human rights violations in Iran. As Iranians celebrate their New Year, let us remember absent friends before we move on to the wider issues. I am thinking of Jamil Bassam and Ebrahim Khodabandeh, who are still in prison in Tehran because they are supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran. I met the new Iranian ambassador a few weeks ago to again put the case for them to be released. Here are two Britons who were taken illegally to Tehran. They must be allowed to return to this country. I hope that I will get a reply soon, and a positive one. They are individuals, of course, who have been caught up in this terrible situation that we have in Iran and in the United Kingdom, because the Peoples Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI) is on the terrorism list. We have heard today a number of speakers talk about this issue being both a legal and a political problem. It is both. It is nothing short of tragic that it has not been possible to redress this injustice legally, and it is very difcult to get it sorted out politically, although people like Lord Corbett in leadership of the British Committee for Iran Freedom and all of our colleagues here are ghting hard to bring about that political change, because there is no good reason whatsoever why the PMOI should be on the British terrorism list. It is a travesty and it has been done through the politics of appeasement, the so-called constructive engagement that the European Union has conducted with Iran. If only we could see some positive outcome of that constructive engagement! Year after year you read the human rights reports of our own Foreign and Commonwealth Ofce and what do they say? They wring their hands and say despite all our efforts to get the Iranian government to be more reasonable - and there is this European Union-Iran dialogue on human rights - the human rights situation in Iran is getting worse rather than better. A year ago, we saw how virtually all of the so-called reform candidates were banned from standing for election, and everyone realized just how empty the concept of democracy in Tehran was. There is no democracy and there are no human rights. The inclusion of the PMOI in the terrorism list is even more astounding, when you consider the fact that the only reason we found out about the Iranian governments 52
then-secret nuclear program was because the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), through their connections to the PMOI in Iran, were able to reveal what was happening. Despite this, our government still insists on keeping the PMOI on the terrorism list. Our government should be thanking the NCRI and the PMOI for their revelation of the dark side of what is happening in Iran. I certainly hope that out of this conference today, we can go forward with renewed strength to approach our government to get them to change their minds and to persuade them that there is a different way, a third option, to approach Iran. We know that constructive engagement has not worked. Can we point to a single achievement of this policy? We cannot. Can we point to a positive sign the human rights are getting better, that democracy is getting better, that the nuclear program is being handled in a much more open way? No such development is taking place. We also know it is futile to think that there could be a military solution and invasion by any country. The answer must come from within Iran itself. We know that there is an opposition movement in Iran. We know that the PMOI are there working away secretly. Their work has to be clandestine, otherwise like so many thousands of their supporters they would be slapped into prison. Over the years, thousands of them have met an untimely end. But we do know from the recent reports of the Norouz celebrations that the people of Iran are taking advantage of these traditional celebrations to tell the government that they want change. What we want is that the NCRI be a part of a democratic Iran, where the state allows proper freedom, proper tolerance. Let us have free elections in Iran. If the Iranian authorities are so condent that they can win elections and that the PMOI is a minority, let them open the doors to democracy. Let people vote and stand freely, without the fear of being thrown into prison. Let a message go out from this conference: that we will not rest until there is democracy and freedom in Iran, and the followers of the PMOI are free to stand up on the streets and give their view on how we can have a democratic and truly free Iran.
53
Politicians must press the Government to de-proscribe PMOI

Lord King of West Bromwich
Lord King of West Bromwich, Britains rst Sikh Peer, is a member of the National Policy Forum. I have heard a lot of speeches about the situation in Iran and the PMOI being on the terrorist list. If anybody knows what has been done in Iran by the so-called mullahs government, it would be quite clear who should be on that terrorist list: 120,000 people executed, kids of 18 being hanged in public squares, and so on. I think somebody reading these things or watching them on television will be able to say whether the PMOI should be on the terrorist list or the government in Iran. I nd it very difcult to understand why the British government, knowing what is actually happening in Iran, is trying to do that. One argument was that there were some moderates in the regime there, and if we tried to encourage them, then things would sort themselves out. But that has not happened in the last 20 years. How long are the people to be hanged, beaten up, women stoned to death before those moderates can come out and take over the government? Now, appeasement was tried and it is not the rst time that this government says we should try appeasement. You remember that little of piece of paper that the Prime Minister of Britain, Neville Chamberlain, was showing to everyone when he was trying to appease Hitler? He reassured everyone that everything should be all right, and the consequence was that too many people were killed before that bully was actually brought down. The more time is given to bullies like the mullahs of Iran, the worse things will become. So it is important to wake up to the situation know and put those people on the terror list who should be there, not the PMOI. The clear message from this conference should be that if in the best democracy in the world, we cannot see the difference between who is a terrorist and who is not, then there must be something wrong and we should try to put that right. As many speakers have said, appeasement has not worked. President Bush said sometime ago that it is an evil regime in Iran and at the same time we are not doing anything about it. Now, we should learn from our own experience in Iraq that outside forces when they go to another country, it does not matter how good the cause is, it is not easy to 54
change system through outside force. It has to come from people within that country. And I think, as it was mentioned earlier regarding the NCRI and other opposition groups there who got the capacity. They can do things. All they need is bit of encouragement and good will from people who believe in democratic system. I hope this conference and all the people involved here give their encouragement to such organizations. We as politicians will put clear pressure on our government, as far as we can to change their stance and to de-list the PMOI. That will be a good start and a good New Year present to us all.
55
Britain must recognise the custodians of Iranian democracy and de-proscribe PMOI
Andrew Mackinlay, MP Andrew Mackinlay, a Member of Parliament for Thurrock since 1992, has been a member of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee since 1997. A prominent Labour backbencher, Mr. Mackinlay has a wellestablished trade unionist past and serves on the Parliamentary Labour Party backbench committee. I want to rst of all thank Lord Corbett and others, particularly the British Committee for Iran Freedom, who organized and facilitated this conference. All too often we take for granted the energies of people with great tenacity who defend an issue day after day, week after week. As a member of the House of Commons, I am moved and appreciative of those Iranians who day after day are in the lobby of the House of the Commons, encouraging members of Commons and of the House of the Lords to take interest in this great crime of denying the people of Iran freedom and justice and I salute them on this occasion. Their constant reminder of the gross persecution, torture and human rights violations is very important. All too often and all too easily, we as Members of Parliament, are given false comfort by the assurances which come from the British Foreign Ofce that things are getting better in Iran, or for a need to engage. We need to continue to press the Foreign Ofce of the need to suck with a very long spoon when they are dealing with the Iranian embassy here or the government in Tehran. I am also conscious of the fact that although the primary concern of us all is the denial of human rights and lack of democracy in Iran, all of us share a deep concern and great nervousness about the potential for nuclear proliferation. It seems to me that more and more, the British government, the European Union and others need to focus on this not with a view to appeasing the mullahs, but of telling them that this will not be tolerated. The British government and the European Union must acknowledge that they want Iran nuclear free. They need to give succour and support and encouragement to brave men and women in London, Paris and elsewhere who are trying to change their countrys status and bring democracy and justice to it. That is the way, in my view, of avoiding the potential for additional nuclear power and nuclear proliferation. Mrs. Rajavi, when she spoke in the European Parliament, quite rightly in my view, rejected European Unions policy of engagement or appeasement, as some of us would call it. But, as a proud Iranian woman, she also rejected any prospect of external 56
aggression, and I applaud that. She pointed to a third way: facilitating the men and women of Iran themselves to change their countys regime and bring about justice and democracy. What it requires of Britain and other European countries is to end the insulting situation where the Peoples Mojahedin is put on our list of terrorists. What we need is to get the British government to recognise the custodians of Iranian democracy and they should be given every help and encouragement. That is what Mrs. Rajavi sought, and thats what I think all of us here endorse. It is a paradox that Tony Blair, speaking before a committee of the House of Commons this year, said that the Iranian regime is involved in state terrorism. My hope is those of you who have sustained the struggle continue to do so. We will be encouraged by the fact that you do so with a clear conscience at this moment. You can be sure that freedom will arise in Iran, as certain as the sun rises each morning from the morning clouds. That is what is going to happen. Lord Alton and myself, when we were boys, used to sing a hymn at school which said, Our fathers thrown in prisons dark, were still in heart and conscience free. And I hope that every man and woman here who stands up for those people who are persecuted in Tehran and elsewhere in that country will take heart and courage and perseverance from the knowledge that their sacrice will not be in vain. Freedom will rise in Iran with great certainty in a not too distant future.
57
Let us show the Iranian regime and the Iranian people on whose side we stand: de-proscribe the PMOI
Lord Alton of Liverpool A Member of the House of Commons for 18 years and a former Chief Whip of the Liberal Party, David Alton today is an Independent crossbench life Peer. Lord Alton is also Professor of Citizenship at Liverpool John Moores University. I was looking upward earlier on, where it says that great tribute will be paid to them that endureth in the heat of a conict. In the 25 years since I rst organised a meeting for the Iranian Resistance at a political conference, I have watched as you have endured through such terrible conict and through so many depredations and through so much abuse, not least for listing of this resistance organization as a so-called terrorist group. But you should be encouraged that those who resist will endure and you will ultimately see the fruits of your labours. We who believe in democracy and freedom know that it will be through the power of argument and not through the power of the sword that you will achieve your objectives. For forty long years in this country, they struggled to end slavery; men like William Wilberforce, who campaigned to end the tyranny that said another man could be owned as a slave merely because of the colour of his skin. For forty long years, they campaigned using democratic means, and when Wilberforce was nally on his death bed, the word came that those laws had been repealed. To them that endureth in the heat of the conict will come success. I think you should be encouraged by that story. But in the fullness of time the freedoms and liberties that we are enjoying in countries like this today will also be the freedoms and the liberties that you will enjoy in Iran. But that is certainly not so today. A dispatch from Tehran on Monday, March 21, in the Guardian tells how people are enduring in Iran during the New Year celebrations. It says in previous years pro-regime vigilantes had been deployed to break up gatherings like this by force. This time, however, the regime has tacitly permitted the festivals, but tolerance has its limits. As people gathered, squads of baton-wielding police ofcers sealed off the nearby Mohseni Square, lest it become a magnet for unmanageably large crowds. Several times they attacked, using their batons and ring teargas canisters. Mohammad Qodsi, who is a 28-year-old student, when asked what kind of political system he wanted to replace with the kind of tyranny he is facing, said, 58
We will sacrice our lives for democracy and for freedom. I have no doubt about what the objectives of the PMOI, the Iranian Resistance, have been throughout these long 25 years. They are the values of democracy and of freedom. I am pleased to be able to be with you today to provide you with a short contribution on the issue of misuse of terrorist list and of political and trade games, in particular with reference to the case of the Iranian Mojahedin. I am very glad that Lord Slynn of Hadley has brought this matter before international bodies and before our own parliament. It was one of the gravest injustices that I have ever witnessed to see the PMOI listed in the way that it has been. In 2001, in the debate in the House of Lords, I said then that it is signicant that the U.S. State Department lists the Iranian government alongside those most likely to be involved in acts of state-sponsored terrorism. I said we seem to have confusion about who are the perpetrators of terrorism and who is resisting it. I said it is worth stating clearly for the record what the Resistance say about themselves. I quoted Massoud Rajavi as saying these words: I pledge on behalf of the Iranian Resistance that if anyone from our side oversteps the red line concerning absolute prohibition of attacks on civilians and innocent individuals, either deliberately or unintentionally, he or she would be ready to stand trial in any international court and will accept any ruling by the court, including the payment of compensation. Would the Iranian government be prepared to issue such a statement? In 2001, I said in the House of Lords, and I repeat it today, defending the Mojahedin in this case is defending not only the right of the Iranian people to resist, it is defending our own values. It is defending the most fundamental rights of human beings: the right to freedom of expression, the right to freedom of assembly, and the right to freedom of association. That is what this gathering is all about today. I have no illusion about the threat from terrorism and the need to prevent and combat it. But be clear: the theocratic regime in Iran has in fact been responsible for terrible atrocities at home and abroad. We are as deeply confused in 2005 as we were in 2001 in seeing where the realities lie. In respect to Iran, the Foreign Secretary and the Foreign Ofce generally seem to be confused about who the perpetrators of terrorism are and who is resisting it. In the debate on those draft Orders in 2001, I raised the question, would we have proscribed the French resistance during the second world war? My friend Lord Archer also drew the comparison with Nelson Mandela. I raise that comparison again today. At the time of the debate in Parliament, I, like many others in both Houses, expressed how disturbed I was to see that Jack Straw had included the PMOI in the list of proscribed organizations. I am in no doubt that that decision had nothing to do with terrorism, but was a political decision. It was a sad day for our democracy on which the values that we had upheld for decades and even centuries were violated. 59
Defending the Iranian Mojahedin in this case is defending not only the right of the Iranian people to resist tyranny and oppression, but it is defending our own democratic institutions. As I said in 2001, it is defending our own values. It is defending the most fundamental rights of human beings. The Iranian people have on many occasions made it clear that they demand democratic change through the complete overthrow of the present theocracy. Most recently in the festival of re, which dates back to Irans Zoroastrian past, millions of Iranians have answered the call of the Iranian Resistance to protest against the regime. The regimes response, as I have already illustrated, has been typical and brutal with protestors being attacked, and I understand there have been ve deaths and hundreds of injuries. Now in such circumstances, it is essential that our government immediately reverses its wrong policy, as Lord King has said, of appeasement towards Iran. The policy has been counter-productive. In fact, it has emboldened the most radical elements of the Iranian regime and allowed them to take complete control of Iran. By way of example of this weak policy, what signal does it send to the mullahs when they kidnap eight British sailors, put them through mock executions, parade them on television blind-folded and force them to make false confessions, and the Foreign Ofce, of course, shows no response? This is the wrong signal, the signal that mullahs can act with impunity. Now, the rst step in this policy reversal should be the immediate removal of the Iranian Mojahedin from the list of proscribed organizations and the recognition of the inalienable right of the Iranian people to resist against tyranny and oppression. Following the de-proscription of the PMOI, our government should adopt the third policy option in dealing with Iran as declared by Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the Presidentelect of the Iranian Resistance, in the European Parliament on December 15, 2004. She made it clear that Iranian people neither approve of appeasement of the Iranian regime, nor do they welcome any form of outside military intervention. All they ask is that the West remains neutral in the struggle between, on the one hand, the Iranian regime and, on the other hand, the Iranian people and the resistance. In this way, the Iranian people and their resistance will bring about the change that is so needed in Iran. I welcome the recent statement by President Bush that as the Iranian people struggle for their freedom, America will stand with them. I also welcome the [British] Prime Ministers recent acknowledgement of the Iranian regimes role in international terrorism. The time for words has come to an end, however; it is time for action. By action, I am not referring to war, but clear political and economic steps to show the mullahs and the Iranian people on whose side we stand. Let me end with some words from a recent Daily Telegraph editorial with which I agree: 60
How might we catalyze such a revolution? First, we should cease our dealings with the mullahs. EU countries, in contrast with the Americans, have pursued a policy of constructive engagement with Tehran, exchanging state visits and sending Jack Straw on repeated visits. Iranians take Britain especially seriously, perhaps imagining that we are still the power we were when we last occupied their country in 1941. That policy is now in shreds as Irans nuclear program nears completion. Second, we should give nancial and political assistance to dissidents inside the country. Third, we should back the main resistance group, the Peoples Mojahedin, which until recently were treated as a terrorist organisation to appease Khamenei. Give them the tools and let them nish the job. Give them the tools and let them nish the job.
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Target the real terrorists, not the victims

David Amess, MP
David Amess has been a Member of Parliament from the Conservative Party since 1983. He is a former PPS to the Secretary of State for Defence and sits on the Select Health Committee. The international community has every right to be extremely concerned at the destructive policies being pursued by the ayatollahs in Iran. It is time for the Iranian regime to put an end to the policies that have turned it into a threat to regional and global peace and security: the persistent violation of human rights, the sponsorship of terrorism, the extensive meddling in Iraq, and nuclear proliferation. The experience of recent years shows that the European Unions policy of constructive engagement of the Iranian regime has clearly backred. Instead of having a moderating inuence on the behaviour of the theocratic regime, this policy has only strengthened the hard-line factions of the clerical clique. Hard-line extremists are now in complete control and are pursuing the same old destructive policies. It is therefore time for the international community to close ranks and send an unmistakeable signal to Tehran. We all want a diplomatic solution to this issue. But to be effective, our diplomacy must be rm and resolute. This is why it is imperative for Western governments to voice their support for the democratic aspirations of the Iranian people and the Iranian opposition movement, which seek to establish democracy and human rights in Iran. In a speech at the European Parliament in December, Maryam Rajavi, the Presidentelect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, echoed the feelings of the Iranian people, when she said that the only viable policy option for the West is neither appeasement nor war, but support for democratic change brought about by the Iranian people and their resistance movement. Today there is a considerable body of legal opinion by pre-eminent jurists arguing that there is no legal basis to include the Iranian opposition Peoples Mojahedin in the terrorism list. Thousands of members of parliaments in 20 countries across Europe and a majority of members of the U.S. Congress have made the same point. One important step we must take to help the Iranian people in their momentous struggle against the ayatollahs tyranny is to remove their resistance movement from the terrorism list. They were only put there in the rst place as a sop to the ruling mullahs. The time has come to target the real terrorists, not the victims of terrorism. We must begin by making a clear distinction between legitimate resistance movements under dictatorial regimes and terrorism 62
Muster every power to get PMOI o the list

Malcolm Fowler
Malcolm Fowler is a former President of the Birmingham Law Society and a former Chair of the Criminal Law Committee of the Law Society of England & Wales. He is presently a Partner in the rm of Jonas Roy Bloom and a member of the International Human Rights Committee of the law Society. I speak really on behalf of 160,000 solicitors and I am proud to be here. Lets go back centuries to perhaps the most celebrated jurist of all, Sir Thomas Moore, who likened honour to holding water in the palms of your hands. If you open your ngers your honour is gone. The same applies to human rights. That is why I am committed to this struggle like so many of the lawyers. It is, I fear, the way of all government; they will opt, given half a chance, for expediency rather than principles. This is what we are witnessing here. I am Labour, and I am ashamed of our government. We must continue to ght against this proposition for constructive engagement, or appeasement, a rose by any other name. Some time ago, Mrs Rajavi likened the Iranian clerical regime to a snake, and said a snake cannot give birth to a dove and that there should be an end to appeasement. I liken the Iranian regime to the police service and the security services. They are like Oliver Twist, in this way and this way only, that they always want more. The difference is that they already enjoyed several banquets in terms of legislations. We have the evidence of recent history. If you attempt to appease the Iranian clerical regime, they want more, and are given more. We must stop rolling over. The key is the terrorist list. It is not all, but it is fundamental. Politics and law are one and the same. They always were and they always will be. You cannot separate the two. You should not even try. And so at this very special time of the year for all Iranians, I say this, Ma Hameh Irani Hastim: We are all Iranians. We must through every power we can muster, every contact we can make, in all our different ways put pressure on the government and increase this ever-increasing network. That is the heartening thing. I see more people committed from different walks of life all the time. And again to quote from Mrs Rajavi, Mitavan va Bayad: We can, and we must.
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Thursday, 24 March 2005
Source: Hansard
Dr. Rudi Vis (Finchley and Golders Green) (Lab): I have spoken about Cyprus in previous Adjournment debates, but I shall not do so today, given the very sensitive negotiations that are being held in respect of Turkeys possible accession to the EU on 3 October. I shall turn instead to the proscription in the United Kingdom, the European Union and the United States of the Peoples Mojahedin Organisation of Iranthe PMOIin the review of the Terrorism Act 2000. Obviously, no one wants to undermine effective and lawful measures against terrorist organisations, but the PMOI is a legitimate resistance movement with the aim of establishing democracy and respect for human rights in Iran. Yesterday was new years day for Iranians the world over, and two days ago I attended an international symposium of parliamentarians and jurists in the assembly hall of Church House in Deans Yard, where I spoke in much the same terms as now. The PMOI has ceased all military activities since June 2001. More importantly, its activities, which were conned to Iran and never took place outside, were aimed at the repressive regime of the mullahs. The proscription of the PMOI and another 20 organisations was discussed in the House for one and a half hours, and no evidence against the PMOI was forthcoming in that debate. The proscription seems to be a legal construct, but in reality it is a political construct, so it can be done and undone. Mrs. Rajavi, who is seen by the PMOI as the president-elect, and directs a large administration in France in preparation for and in the hope of a takeover in Iran, recently spoke in the European Parliament. She rightly rejects the appeasement approach that France, Germany and the UK want to follow. She also rightly rejects the war option. She presented a third optionchange brought about by the Iranian people and the Iranian resistance. It is difcult to understand the appeasement road. Why would anyone be in favour of a regime that has no human rights, has a nuclear weapons programme, exports terrorism and fundamentalism and has killed 120,000 of its own people? It is also difcult to understand the war option, particularly after Iraq. I would add that there are few similarities between the societies of Iran and Iraq. Mrs. Rajavis third way is surely the preferred option. It requires the proscription of the PMOI to be lifted as soon as possible. Doing so would be part of bringing much of what is now so dangerous and difcult in the Middle East to an end. I ask my hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House to put my request to my right hon. Friend the
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Foreign Secretary, for an answer based on real evidence. I wish all hon. Members a tranquil Easter. The Deputy Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Phil Woolas) said in response: I will make sure that my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary is aware of my hon. Friends comments, and I thank him for the intelligence and insights that he has brought to the debate.
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Paris Conference
November 10, 2004
An Unequivocal Message from Jurists from across the World

Jean-Pierre Spitzer
On November 10, 2004, eminent professors of law, jurists and political dignitaries convened at Maison de la Chimie in Paris in an international conference to discuss an issue of great importance for international and European law: the problems associated with the lists of terrorist organizations. The conferences topic for study was the Peoples Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI), the principal opposition force to the Iranian regime. The recent agreement between the European troika (France, Germany, United Kingdom) and Tehran, in which these three countries proposed, in exchange for the cooperation of the Iranian regime in the domain of nuclear weapons, to continue to consider the PMOI as a terrorist organization is a disturbing avowal on the part of the European Union which has no explanation other than that of attempting to give the Iranian regime a pledge in order to improve the European Unions relations with this regime. Furthermore, this avowal conrms, if it were necessary, that intrinsically none of the conditions set forth by international law and European law permits the classication of the PMOI in the category of terrorist organizations. On the contrary, the facts such as were observed, in the eld and elsewhere in Iraq and governing law, are objective testimony to the unlawfulness of the inclusion of the PMOI on these lists. Lord Slynn of Hadley, a former judge of the European Court of Justice, Professor Eric David, renowned specialist in International Humanitarian Law, Professors Henry Labayle and Bruno Nascimbene, eminent specialists in EC law, one at the University of Pau and the other of Milan, have drafted major treatises which they presented, in synopsis, before over 500 jurists, political gures and representatives of the civil society. Each of them has studied the issue from a different angle. But they all had an abundantly clear message to impart: the inclusion of the name of the PMOI in these lists not only has no legal or factual justication, but it violates existing law in a peremptory manner. With convincing arguments, these eminent specialists demonstrated: that under international law, and within the context of Irans recent history, the PMOI
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must be considered as a belligerent in a conict not of an international character and thereby be governed by the Geneva Conventions; that on the basis of the recognition of the PMOIs status by the Member States of the Coalition in Iraq as protected persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention, U.S. forces protected PMOI personnel in Iraq, thereby transforming PMOIs members into protected terrorists which is contradictory, to say the least, that European law, which demands entitlement to a trial, a procedure in which all parties are heard, and acts and/or decisions which are motivated, was clearly violated by the inclusion of the PMOI in the European list of terrorism under the present circumstances. In short, the topic of study, i.e. the case of the Peoples Mojahedin, constitutes a agrant example of the manner in which political logic can trample fundamental principles and human rights. In this instance, one can only acknowledge that political goals have outed the principle that all parties should be heard and the respect of due process, the right to a fair trial and the presumption of innocence. In this context, as all the participants of this international conference pointed out, there is no question that both international law and European law are in favor of the Peoples Mojahedin. And if the injustice of which the Mojahedin are the victims today were to end, i.e. if the realpolitik in favor of the ayatollahs regime were abandoned, this would represent a great victory, not only for the PMOI, but also and above all for the rule of law. The various legal opinions and interventions were particularly thorough and substantiated. In summary, we can infer from them the following: 1) The use of the terrorist label against the Mojahedin is the result of an error of interpretation. Indeed, the operations conducted by the Mojahedin, under Article 3 common to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, fall into the framework of an armed conict, which was not international, but rather a conict between a section of the Iranian population, of which the PMOI was a part, and the repressive regime of the ayatollahs, which executed over 120,000 political prisoners and imprisoned tens of thousands of others. The real situation such as evoked by Lord Slynn and Professor de Cara shows that this was indeed an armed conict: on the one side, a totalitarian regime which continues to oppress citizens, and on the other an organized opposition with a command system which claims and assumes responsibility for all its acts on Iranian territory alone, and never against the civilian population. 2) The European Unions Framework Decision 475/2002 retraces the general legal framework of the ght against terrorism. This decision does not concern the operations of the armed forces which take place during armed conict. A statement appended to this resolution makes a clear distinction between terrorism and resistance, specifying that one cannot qualify the acts of those who are ghting 70
in the name of democratic values, such as the acts conducted during the Second World War in the countries occupied (by the Nazis), as terrorist acts. Similarly, one cannot accuse those who are acting to express their opinions, even if their acts can sometimes be likened to violations under the laws of the repressive country, of being terrorists. 3) The inclusion of the PMOI on the list of terrorist organizations is contrary to the standards and fundamental rights recognized under European law and also mentioned in the European Convention for Human Rights, in particular due process, the right to a fair equitable trial, and the right to access to a judge. Moreover, given the arbitrary nature of this classication, which is subject to no democratic control, on the part of the European Parliament in particular the principle of the presumption of innocence has been outed with serious consequences for the members and sympathizers of this organization who have been deprived of their fundamental rights. This would be even more serious if judicial control, like parliamentary control, were not exercised. In conclusion, all the jurists present, expressing themselves also as citizens and democrats., rose up against the fate reserved for the PMOI and the injustice of which its members are the victims, in contempt of the most fundamental rights acknowledged both in international spheres and within the European territory, and denounced this realpolitik, observed also in the villainous agreement reached between the Troika and the ayatollahs regime, which prolongs a scathing injustice instead of denouncing the persistent violation of human rights committed by this regime, which wields a tyrants hand over the Iranian people. Jean-Pierre Spitzer Chairman of the Conference
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Morning Session
Chaired by Jean Pierre Spitzer
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Opening Statement
Mr. Bertrand Favreau President of the Institute of Human Rights at the Bordeaux Bar Association President of the European Attorneys Institute of Human Rights
Madam President of the National Council of Iranian Resistance, Mr. Chairman, Professors, Ladies and Gentlemen It is an honor for me to present this welcome speech to thank you for having come to this event in such great numbers. I would like to thank the institutions I represent, the European Lawyers Human Rights Institute, the Human Rights Institute of the Bordeaux Bar Association of which I had the honor of being the president but also the Human Rights and Social Justice Research Institute of the Metropolitan University of London, presided over by our colleague Professor Bill Bowring, as well as the other organizers of this conference, the Lawyers Human Rights Institute of Italy, headed by our colleague Mr. Mario Lana, and the Association of Democratic Jurists of Italy, headed by Mr. Fabio Marcelli. I would like to thank the eminent professors who have joined us from all over Europe: Professor Eric David from Brussels, Professor Nascimbene from Milan, Professor Bowring from London, Mr. Heusler from the Berlin Bar Association, and Mr. Wolfgang Kaleck, President of the Republic Lawyers Association of Germany. I would also like to take a few moments to remind all those who are perhaps not directly concerned, of the immediacy or acuteness, to use Mr. Jean-Pierre Spitzers expression, and the stakes of our debate today. For us who are in France, and many of us are French, the word terrorism has a particular connotation. But I would like to remind you that the word prospered during an intense period of our history, that of the French revolution, and that it has a particular signicance which has been distorted. A terrorist is someone who practices terror, and the terrorist in that instance was a terrorist government. The word came into being in 1794, at a time of what we called the Thermidorean reaction, to castigate those who, while in power, had persecuted those whom they were supposed to govern. Thus the term terrorist made its advent in our French language. So the rst purpose of this debate is to remind all of us that it is up to the governments in power to respect democracy, to respect freedom and to respect peace between men and nations, and not to qualify those who are struggling to defend these values as terrorists in order to ban them for ever from the list of self-righteous people who
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are entitled to the respect of their fundamental rights. The second observation which ensues is that we can no longer accept the designation, the enumeration, branding, tallying of human beings who are struggling for their freedom in the name of values which are dear to those who want to maintain their status in power at any cost, even in the disregard of mankind and others. These are the goals of our gathering here. We learned with amazement in an AFP press release which was never denied, that there had been a sordid bargaining as there sometimes is between States and between men. According to the report, the European Union had entertained negotiations with a terrorist regime, which killed 120,000 people, which hangs 16-year-old children in public, which amputates arms and legs, even those of the aged, and the price of this negotiation was the rogue commitment to maintain on a list of terrorists people who are soldiers of democracy and freedom. So, if in a country such as France, no emotion or indignation rises in us to denounce this type of practice, there is something wrong. So let us designate no one, let us not draw up lists. As Professor Labayle put it, one is always someones terrorist. I am very honored to have received hundreds of anonymous letters during the 1980s for having awarded the human rights prize to the daughter of a man who was in prison, accused of terrorism, whose name was Nelson Mandela. See how the times have changed. See how twenty, thirty years afterwards, values can change. The ght is a contemporary one, the ght is present. That is why our institutions support the struggle of the PMOI and the National Council of Resistance of Iran. I remind all of us, as Europeans, that one of the profound truths of human existence and of its struggle is the struggle for freedom. In Goethes Faust, the primitive Faust, there is this sentence which should serve as our maxim for action: This is the highest wisdom that I own, The best that mankind ever knew: Freedom and life are earned by those alone Who conquer them each day anew. I greet you and thank you.
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Terrorism and Fundamental Rights

Mr. Christophe Pettiti Secretary General of the European Lawyers Human Rights Institute Madam President, Ladies and Gentlemen, As an introduction, I was asked to lay before you the problem of terrorism and fundamental rights, a delicate topic to deal with. Singling out this problem means asking whether these two concepts are compatible: can one ght against terrorism and respect fundamental rights, must one respect fundamental rights while ghting terrorism? Or simply, is not the battle against terrorism a manner of respecting fundamental rights? Should terrorism, as such, determine a specic status for prosecuting, incriminating and possibly a status guaranteeing the rights of persons accused of terrorism. If we begin by examining comparative law, we see that after the attacks of September 11, many nations adopted specic legislation with specic violations, specic punishments, to ght the phenomenon of terrorism. However, we have no specic national provisions for the protection of fundamental rights. We have only general provisions. On the European and international levels, while the issue of terrorism is obviously not a new one, it is increasingly important, and we note that there has been no progress in elaborating a general text allowing for the ght against terrorism, but also the respect of our fundamental rights. If terrorism is not a specic violation, if it is not a specic right, does common law allow us to respond to the problem, and to associate terrorism and fundamental rights? In a previous statement, the Secretary General of the European Council of Ministers described the issue of the ght against terrorism in these terms: The State must call upon its entire legal arsenal to repress and prevent terrorist activities, but it cannot take any measure whatsoever, for this would deplete the fundamental values it intends to protect. If a Nation were to act in this manner, it would fall into the trap which terrorism has prepared for democracy and the rule of law. He made this statement in September 2002, just before the adoption by the Council of Ministers of the guidelines on human rights and the ght against terrorism. Tackling the problem of terrorism-fundamental rights obviously leads us in an initial stage to a denition of terrorism, to try to nd in European and international law an accurate denition which would allow us, based on a denition, to dene what laws and what standards apply. It is of course difcult to provide a common law denition: we could speak of acts of violence which impact innocent civilian populations with the goal perhaps of creating a 76
climate of insecurity and achieving certain political objectives. Professor Delmas-Marty refers to global crime. International and European law do not precisely dene what terrorism is. They dene certain behavior and acts which they deem unlawful and which warrant particular means of prosecution. We can search the standards of the EU Council and the United Nations; discover what exists in the domain of international standards. On the level of the EU Council, the main denitions that can be found in this approach are those resulting from the guidelines adopted by the Council of Ministers on July 11, 2002. In an initial stage, following the attacks of September 11, the Council was intent on emphasizing that these crimes, which had hit New York, were not an attack against the United States alone, but concerned us all; they were barbaric acts violating human rights and in particular the right to life, to democracy and the quest for peace. In an initial stage, the Council of Ministers called upon the member States to ratify the conventions existing in the EU Council, the European Extradition Convention and its two protocols, the European Convention of Mutual Judicial Assistance, the European Convention for the Suppression of Terrorism; all international instruments aimed at setting up a system of legal cooperation aimed at combating terrorist acts. In these three conventions, you will nd no general provisions aimed at providing a legal framework to guarantee the fundamental rights of persons accused of terrorism. This is why the Council of Ministers adopted these guidelines in 2002, recalling in its preamble that it is not only possible, but absolutely necessary to ght terrorism, in the respect of human rights, the pre-eminence of law and, when applicable, international law. When applicable, what does international law tell us? On the level of the United Nations, there are myriad declarations to the effect that acts of terrorism are a threat to peace, a threat to international security and, reiterating a text which has partially warranted my intervention today, that I had presented right after a conference organized after the September 11 attacks. I quoted the texts of the resolutions of the European Convention drafted at the time the stand was taken in fact that there was a threat to peace, international security, warranting the calling-forth by the United States and the United Kingdom of Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, a military intervention in Afghanistan. These texts must be re-read today in light of recent events. On the level of the United Nations, we can quote two international conventions: the International Convention for the Suppression of Terrorist Bombings signed on December 15, 1997 and a second International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism signed on December 9, 1999. In these two conventions, there is a denition of acts of terrorism. There are no provisions concerning the protection of their fundamental rights to be afforded persons accused of terrorism. At the United Nations also, a general convention on international terrorism has been in the process of being elaborated for almost ten years. This convention should provide a certain number of guarantees. 77
In the ght against terrorism, the problem also arose, given that people realized that the laws of the United Nations were insufcient. If acts of terrorism could be likened to crimes against humanity, this would permit the triggering of the application of an international law and in particular, possibly tomorrow, the Charter of Rome creating the International Criminal Court. In this Rome Charter, rights and guarantees are granted to persons accused of crimes against humanity. But then one can see that there is a possible problem between terrorism and fundamental rights. Of course there are divergent appreciations as to the application of the Rome Convention to acts of terrorism, in particular on the interpretation of Article 7 dening what crimes against humanity actually are. If we look therefore at the international law of the United Nations and the laws of the European Union, we realize that we have no general law, if we exclude acts of terrorism from the acts which constitute crimes against humanity. It is therefore in general law that we shall nd the applicability of fundamental guarantees. This means that we are facing our second problem: The ght against terrorism is not a specic right in the absence of any standards which generally lend a framework to the ght against acts of terrorism. Here we must look toward our European or international common law. This common and international law, in a few words in order to stay within our time frame, is of course the civilian political pact of the United Nations which guarantees to persons accused of terrorism, and the European Convention of Human Rights which of course lends a structure not only to the ght by States against acts of terrorism, but which also oversees the provisions which guarantee the rights of persons accused of terrorism. I shall of course quote Article 5, Article 6, Article 8 of the Convention and of the laws from which no departure shall be tolerated, Article 2 guaranteeing the right to life, Article 3 prohibiting acts of torture regardless of the objective pursued by a State. In the jurisprudence of the European Court, we note that States cannot depart from exceptions to the general laws, even if they are combating acts of terrorism lawfully. Therefore, in the presence of a law which does not exist internationally, one must turn to general standards: the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of the United Nations and the European Convention on Human Rights. We realize that the judge of course has a role to play in protecting fundamental rights which protect populations, but which also protect persons accused of terrorism. And I shall end with a brief piece of information which I saw in yesterdays issue of Le Monde. A federal Judge in Washington, James Robertson, , ordered the suspension of a trial before a special Guantanamo military commission, considering that the absence of a law applying to the prisoners of Guantanamo was contrary to the standards protecting fundamental rights. He cannot be tried for the offenses with which he was accused by a military court, by a court martial. Fundamental guarantees must be respected, the right to have an independent judge. This is a recent decision which introduces an entirely new issue and the importance given to the judges to respect fundamental rights.
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A Just Right to Resist Against Oppression

Henri Leclerc, Member of the Paris Bar Association, Hon. President of the League of Human Rights The problems at hand are problems of international law. The issue is to determine what rights a certain number of people can have in face of diplomatic-economic interests. I believe that we must all be able to put forth rules of law, the respect of fundamental principles which imply a certain number of obligations and requirements. I believe that we are all here to discuss this topic for an entire day. I would like to say that it always seemed self-evident to me that peoples were entitled to freedom. That beyond their obvious right to freedom, they have the right, as Article 2 of the French Declaration of Human Rights of 1789 states, moreover, to resist oppression. And we know very well that the means used to resist oppression are not unlimited. This means that it is not because one resists oppression that one has the right to commit a certain number of crimes. It is not because one resists oppression that one has the right to massacre innocent people as, alas, is done to some people who also have a fair right to resist oppression. But I am convinced that they are mistaken in utilizing means, in resisting oppression, which are not acceptable in light of the rule of law. Resistance to oppression is obviously not necessarily verbal resistance. And when in the face of tyrannical situations, people resist with force, without putting at risk the lives of innocent persons, but simply by waging an appropriate battle, I believe that they deserve recognition. If, at the same time, diplomatic alliances, economic alliances, commercial alliances, cause their rights to be denied, I say that those who deny their rights under these conditions and who take sides with tyrants take responsibilities by failing to respect their own laws. I hope that the work accomplished today will be fruitful.
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Message of the Rt. Hon. The Lord Slynn of Hadley
Madam President, Distinguished colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen, I very much regret that a pressing legal business keeps me away from this gathering of prominent experts of international European and American law. A number of legal opinions are being presented today on the issue of the inclusion of the Iranian Mojahedin (PMOI) on the list of terrorist organizations. Have studied the issue in some depth during the past 18 months, and having paid two visits to the PMOI camp in Ashraf in Iraq, which provided an unrestrictive access to a large volume of documents, I believe one can make a valid case for the removal of the PMOI from the list of terrorist groups. Because of some of the past military operations of the PMOI, it may be considered that they enjoyed recognition as insurgents. Professor Jean-Yves de Cara and I developed these arguments in an earlier legal opinion. We noted that several precedents of such recognition may be found in the past. The French resistance movement had been recognized as such before it was regarded as a government. In a more recent past, other movements of resistance have been recognized as such: FLN in Algeria during the rebellion against France, SWAPO in Namibia and others which might have ed out the territory of the State against which they were ghting by force or politically. As for the status of PMOIs persons in Iraq, I believe it is imperative now that they are being formally recognized as protected persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention, that they be able to exercise fully their legitimate rights, including their rights to property and freedom of movement. I wish your conference every success in achieving its objectives and hope that it would be an effective rst step towards the removal of the PMOI from the list of terrorist groups.
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Validity of the Inclusion of the PMOI in EUs Terrorism Lists

Professor Henri Labayle Professor of EC law at the University of Pau, Specialist in European Law Mr. Chairman, I would like to thank Mr. Pettiti for having so excellently laid down the terms of todays debate, by indicating that effectively the crux of our questions concerns the respect and protection of fundamental rights by the European Union which, in its treaty, guarantees the exercise of ones fundamental rights on its territory. The decision to enter the PMOI on the EUs anti-terrorist lists, because there are two lists, is the result of a very complex procedure and a process which is very ambiguous today. This is why I shall not dwell on the very merits of the designatioin, because we are going to make an in-depth study with Eric David and Jean-Yves Cara. I would like to remain in a more general framework. Following September 11, 2001, in December, the European Union decided, using an instrument of foreign policy called CFSP (Common Foreign and Security Policy), to create a list system permitting to create in the European Union a process which already existed in the framework of the United Nations, and which had permitted the exclusion from society of a certain number of terrorist organizations, in particular those linked to the Taliban and Al Qaida. This process has been incorporated into European mechanisms. Two lists have been created: one foreign policy list, which makes it possible to use mutual judicial assistance to prosecute the people on this list, and an EC list which may possibly permit the freezing of the assets of the persons on this list. The PMOI is not concerned. When we look at the lists at issue, we nd a certain number of traditional terrorist movements. And then, several months later, in 2002, suddenly these lists are updated and the PMOI appears thereon. And then, 2003, 2004, without any justication, the PMOI is again seen on these lists. The issue which has arisen here is to determine simply what process made it possible to achieve this result, what is the legality and lastly what are the consequences thereof? Even if this common position had been the result of a written procedure within the European Union, which is rarely a guarantee of great transparency, the process had been surrounded by an entire series of declarations by the Council and the States indicating that the rights of the defense, the presumption of innocence, would be respected and that reliable, credible information would be relied on for carrying out this registration. Nonetheless, the States themselves admitted in one or two legal cases which have 81
already been tried before the European court, that the work of the EU authorities called for no verication of the information which had been passed-on to the European Union by the United Nations. One therefore has the feeling, and in its defense the Council says this systematically, that for the European Union the registration on the lists was a sort of mechanical process. If the United nations designated a person or organization, it had to be entered on the list, mechanically, without performing any checks. The problem is that the laws of the European Union do not spare it the expense of a case-by-case examination, the laws of the European Union do not allow it to violate the European Convention of Human Rights, the laws of the European Union do not allow it to disregard international humanitarian law. This is why today, the confrontation of the registration of the PMOI on the list evokes an entire series of essential values involving fundamental rights. The right to the proper administration [of justice] which allows someone who is the victim of a prejudicial act to disclosure of the reasons for which this act was carried out. The principle of motivation. The principle of the specic examination of the circumstances, the right to defend oneself, the presumption of innocence, the right to the respect of privacy, the right to the respect of ones reputation. All these factors theoretically mean that the European Union, when it elaborates an act apt to undermine these rights, must permit the party who is the victim of this act, or who is the object of this act, to present, in return, his own observations so as to make certain that the decision is founded. Here, in reality, everyone knows that there is a clearing house in the European Union which makes these entries without any checks, or verications, and without our truly knowing the reasons for which they are made. And from this standpoint, the fact that the European Unions action in the ght against terrorism has been carried out under the auspices of foreign policy poses a certain number of queries for us as jurists, which cannot be silenced. The two counterweights which usually exist in the European Unions system, the European parliament and the EC court system, are not present in the elaboration and control of the acts of foreign policy. This means that the entire system set up, which is necessary in the ght against terrorism, against Al Quada, against international terrorism, suffers from an inherent aw: no counterweight exists, no judiciary control exists making it possible to correct errors, whether they be fortuitous or deliberate. And in the domain of deliberate error, I would like to point out our concern when in 2002, Mr. Solana in charge of the CFSP, informed the Hamas movement that if it continued to support the attacks in Israel, it would be registered on the list and remain there, but on the other hand that if it ceased making attacks, it would be stricken from the list. And this concern increased when we read the other day an AFP press release in which we realize that the PMOIs inclusion on the list complies with the same process. It would appear here that an abuse of power is occurring, a misuse of the 82
procedure. There are only two explanations: either an entry is warranted by terrorist activities, or it is not. But it cannot respond to other preoccupations, in particular those of diplomatic policy. Lastly, there is reason for great concern today over the judicial consequences of this entry. Several cases have already been tried by the district court concerning other movements on the list. The District Court refuses to acknowledge its jurisdiction to rule on the lawfulness of these entries. The national judge is convinced that the authority of European law prohibits it from questioning them. Today, the only case concerning registrations on these lists which the European Court of Human Rights has tried was a negative case. Today, we are in a situation which has proven to be very preoccupying, in which, if we challenge entries which may have very serious consequences, we may not have a national judge or European judge at our disposal to control the misuse of discretion on the part of the authorities making these entries. This is why I believe that this panels legal debate is totally necessary, independently of the lawfulness, which we shall now discuss, of the registration on the list. Today, the anti-terrorist list procedure must absolutely be accompanied by minimum guarantees, without which we would no longer be a community governed by the rule of law.
83
The PMOI and the Geneva Conventions

Professor Eric David President of the Institute of International Law at the Free University of Brussels one of the most eminent specialists of international humanitarian law in Europe Madam President, Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Colleagues, Indeed, I believe that Professor Labayle presented an accurate assessment of the problem and the tensions which he has just described between international executive power, in this instance European, and that of the courts. These can be recognized in the international community. We have exactly the same difculties with the Security Council which votes resolutions which become veritable ukases for which there is really no judicial control; In the particular instance of the PMOI, the question is: are the armed actions of the PMOI acts of terrorism? If we take the standard European decision, which was adopted on June 13, 2002, we note that they are violent deeds acts of terrorism directed against persons or property, with a view to exerting pressure on the public authorities. In that sense one can say that, yes, indeed, the PMOIs acts are acts of violence intended to exert pressure on the public authorities, on the Iranian public authorities. But to do so would be a little like a surgeon removing a boil from a body totally eaten up by cancer. It would consist in taking a narrow view of things without viewing the context. And what is this context? The context surrounding the PMOIs actions reveals clearly that it is a misuse of language to label their acts as terrorism. Three points must be raised to demonstrate this. First point: One can consider that the PMOIs actions are carried out in the framework of a military conict which is not international, as per Article 3 common to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949. The notion of non-international armed conict is not dened in law. But according to doctrine, and to practice, a non-international armed conict exists when their are open confrontations between a government and organized armed groups or rebels and when the latter are under a central command. Is there open confrontation between the PMOI and the Iranian government? This is the second point. Its true that in the past, particularly during the 80s, at certain periods during the 90s, there was violent opposition between the Iranian armed forces, the pasdarans in particular, the Mojahedin of the Iranian people. But its true that this has 84
not always been the case. Does this sufce to say that there is no armed conict? I believe that the question should be approached differently, and that the Iranian regime must be dened. One could say, without exaggeration, that it is of the regimes which can be qualied as one of the greatest violators of human rights; a regime which, as we said earlier, provoked the execution of over 120,000 people, which imprisoned tens of thousands of persons, which tortures tens of thousands of persons. And it can be said that a regime which implements this type of policy, which is a policy of terror, is truly terrorist. Such a regime obviously commits an ongoing aggression against the portion of the population which doesnt think the way it does. And permanent aggression against a portion of the population is indeed an armed conict in the form of open confrontation, even if it is in the form of simple arbitrary detention, torture and extrajudiciary executions. This leads me to the third point: does this regime have before it a party to the conict, in other words, an organization which is under a responsible command? Clearly the PMOI is not a clandestine organization, it is not a series of units which are vaguely connected to one another in a network which has no address. There is an address, there are people working openly. There are people who belong to a group of persons who have a highly developed political structure which means that indeed we are in the presence of an organization, an organized armed structure under the command of a person in charge, which enables one to say that there are indeed two criteria for armed conict which have been met here, i.e. on the one hand open confrontation via the criterion of ongoing aggression against the people, and on the other the existence of a structured organization which assumes responsibility for its actions and which could even be held responsible for the excesses committed in the framework of its actions. In light of all of the foregoing, the PMOIs actions against the Iranian regime are indeed acts of war, just as Irans acts of repression are also acts of war. And if it is claimed that the PMOIs acts are acts of terrorism, warranting the inclusion of the PMOI on the list of the European Union, the Iranian government would rst of all have to be listed. Thank you.
85
The Arbitrary Nature of the PMOIs Designation

Professor Bill Bowring
Than you very much. I am very glad to be here today. I want to congratulate the organizers who have put together a really remarkable event. I am very proud that my institute in London, Metropolitan University is one of the sponsors of the event, and indeed we were among those who suggested that a specically legal focus on this issue would be important. The reasons are that in our view, the issues we are discussing today affect an enormously wide range of people throughout Eurpe and indeed throughout the world. The PMOI presents a very good case study; we are talking about very much wider issue. My colleague Professor Douwe Korff, unfortunately he is ill today and cannot be here. And I have written what is already quite a lengthy opinion, it is already 33 pages it will be larger. So I will just be speaking for a few minutes now. And he wants to have that opinion to read or to comment, please send me an email and I will send it straight back to you. The main questions that we ask in the opinion are rst of all, what is this denition of terrorism, can that be one. Secondly, how is it that people, individual or organizations nd themselves on these list, and thirdly what can I do to get .... and we make some recommendations. The starting point on the denition for us is the remarks made by Professor Roselyn Higgins of the international court of justice a few years ago, where she said that terrorism is a term without any legal signicance. It is not a legal term. As she says, it is merely a convenient while evoluting to activities leaders of states or individuals widely disapproved of and adds nothing to the actual crimes and domestic law or indeed war crimes, which may be involved. What we do in our opinion is to analyze the denitions which have been given in the United States law and the United Kingdom law and now in the law of the European Union. And what is very clear is that none of these denitions is the term to resume actually.. Indeed, if we look at the United Kingdom law, we nd that terrorism is dened as activities among other things designed to inuence the government. We have here amongst us quite a number of English barristers, solicitors, including the Queens Council Owen Davies, who frequently represents Green Peace, and as it has been rightly pointed out under the denition of the United Kingdom terrorism ..., Green peace is a terrorist organization.
86
But then the human rights committee of the bar of England and Wales, and whose executive are also here today, is also a terrorist organization. And how you nd yourself on those lists is entirely arbitrary. It is interesting that the British government position is that the Mojahedin Khalq, the PMOI is a terrorist organization, but the NCRI is not. It is interesting, and it is a way that perhaps the government justies the present position in Britain, but it is illegally unacceptable. What we go on to do in our opinion is to consider what is the best way of challenging this state of affairs. We have a look at the proceedings in the court of rst instance in the European court of justice, and for all kinds of reason that is a thoroughly unsatisfactory forum. It is a forum that has to be made use of but our conclusion is that it is not a remedy that one must exhaust before going to the European court of Human rights. The view we take, is that whether or not the individuals are prosecuted of face ..... extradition, the provisions of the legislation and the EU compositions concerned amount to violations of a whole series of human rights protected par the European convention on Human rights and fundamental freedoms. Therefore, a very strong advice is that all domestic remedies should be exhausted. We are critical of the PMOI for not completing the proceedings available to them in the United Kingdom, and we will strongly advise that they go back into that system, use the mechanisms for this is . available and go on to the European court of human rights in Strasbourg. That, in particular because, is my nal point. As I said in the beginning it is not just the PMOI. In Britain, we have a sordid history of anti terrorist legislation leading to the criminalization of a whole section of the community, back in the 70 and 80; this was the Irish community in Britain which became a suspect community. Now under the anti terrorist legislation it is the whole of the Muslim community in Britain. We see this now in other countries in Europe. This is extremely dangerous and these dangers are what our opinion seeks to address.
87
A national resistance movement

Jean-Yves de Cara Professor at the Faculty of Law, University Paris V Ren Descartes Allow me, Mr. Chairman, to say a few words to rapidly summarize the viewpoint I share with Lord Slynn. Given the judges resistance or hesitations in confronting the qualication of terrorist, and the difculties of international law generally speaking, it appeared necessary to us, in a pragmatic approach in the eld, to examine the status of the Mojahedin of the People in Iraq and thereby to supplement Professor Davids analysis of the nature of the armed conict in the struggle of the peoples Mojahedin. Now we are dealing with elements which, although contradictory, offer an opportunity in a discussion, in a bilateral negotiation, to present the Mojahedin as a national resistance movement. We know that no denition exists of terrorism from the standpoint of international law. But inversely we also know that international law henceforth recognizes the rights and sometimes the status of groups ghting for their independence, their freedom, for the dignity of their people. The Declaration of Human Rights admits the right to resort, as an ultimate alternative, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression. The United Nations Charter and the United Nations resolutions, just, moreover, as certain aspects of international case law, gave a legal basis and constructive interpretation of the right of peoples to dispose of themselves. The practices of the United Nations are now evolving toward the acknowledgement of a right to democracy. In this respect, with these factors in mind, we therefore considered that the Peoples Mojahedin could enter the category of the resistance movements and in Iraq. It appeared that this was previously their acknowledged status. Two comments: rst of all prior to 2003, it can be contended that the Mojah beneted from the de facto recognition of the Iraqi government in power as a rebel movement, and as a national resistance movement. As an uprising, inasmuch as they were able to participate, until 1988 assuredly, perhaps until 2001, in actions, military type operations on Iranian territory out of their bases in Iraq. One can then consider that they beneted from the recognition on the part of the Iraqi authorities as denite rebels, in accordance moreover with the criteria set and the objectives dened by the practices of the United States itself. In the second place, and simultaneously, they beneted on the part of this government, from recognition as a national resistance movement, because basically how could it be otherwise when this government allowed them to settle in numerous 88
camps, which are not refugee camps but camps solidly established in some one dozen spots on Iraqi territory, and from which they were able to conduct propaganda operations on television, radio or political campaigns, maintain contacts with the outside and in particular with the media, administer military training, maintain sophisticated military equipment on site. Any interference on the part of the Iraqi authorities in these camps was subject to the authorization of the Mojahedin. Under these conditions, status as a recognized entity indeed exists. For the time being, this status has not been withdrawn by the transitional Iraqi government which is the only territorial authority. The occupation forces have no capacity to amend the rules of domestic law in Iraq. This status was therefore acknowledged and continues to exist. Of course, far and beyond the rules of the State succession, there are the severe restrictions imposed by the coalition forces, identication and control procedures, and even limitations of their freedom of movement. However, and this is perhaps a stage which must be acknowledged as important: there is Iraqs recognition of the Peoples Mojahedin as persons protected under Geneva Convention n. 4, by the American authorities. All these factors, which are factual, can therefore be utilized in the framework of discussions, multilateral and bilateral negotiations with the competent authorities, to attribute this capacity to this movement. Thank you Mr. President.
89
A Political Decision
Dr. Wolfgang Kaleck Chairman of the Republican Lawyers Association Thank you Mr. Chairman, dear colleagues, I do not want to bother you all with too many legal details and I do not want to repeat all the legal criticism yet done by my colleagues. I just want to point out some aspects of the analysis my colleague York Arnold from Fryeburg and I do not want to repeat the criticism, I agree and really in every aspect with my colleagues. I want to point out one aspect the smart sanctions, the legal steps taken by UN security council to combat the funding of terrorism are discussed as so called smart sanctions in comparison to classic sanctions which are directed at states here at it concerns sanctions against individuals and groups of individuals with respect to the Taliban an Alquaede these steps were originally justied through the fact that rst the Taliban has an ofce in Afghanistan, and there was therefore a question of state or a quasi state actors as well as those organization connected with them. Nonetheless still directly effect the basic rights of those individuals and organizations directly concerned and also the commercial activities of their partner therefore one legal expert from the German government describes the phenomenon as follows: the security Council is just doing in the ght against international terrorism which cannot be done in a free democracy. interfering with individual rights without simultaneously providing adequate legal support the EU goes far beyond EU terrorism list does not only include Taelban and Alqaida suspects and also as we have already heard Basque organization or the OMPI and other organizations. in so doing the EU has made worse the initial teething problems of smart sanctions. this leads to a couple of legal and political problems that I do not want to list them all because only the list of the violated European law would take like one hour to refer here I want to stress some of the facts of the terrorism list. The inclusion of the OMPI has numerous negative aspects on individual persons as well as organizations working on behalf of the Peoples Mojahedin Organization of Iran and then NCRI. Very few people are directly affected by the methods for ghting terrorism. Above all it was already mentioned in the morning discussion that there is a danger of criminal prosecution and extradition which is not yet reported as a direct result of the list. most of the measures have indirect impact. there is a tenancy involved the commercial and nancial service sector and immigration and aliens authorities to recognize the decision at EU level and that in many cases reference can be made to this in justifying behaviour. From legal and practical prospective this is particularly problematic because individual persons can hardly be able to take any effective legal actions against blocking of their 90
bank account or decision regarding naturalization or asylum that is based on the inclusion of OMPI on the EU terrorist list. So we as the European lawyers and European law professors we have to care about this pratical legal European problem. the critic of the terrorism denition was already done terrorism was more of a political concept than a legal concept there is a universal terrorism denition missing. Mr. David also mentioned critics of the inclusion of the OMPI, so I can draw some conclusions. The EU listings and measures connected with them are political decisionism without any form of legal charactor of fairness. the entire contexts of the measures that is not only spectacularly contradicts the character of the European convention of human rights. to self defense but also from the philosophical legal point of view removes the legal character. The listing process of the EU and resolutions at the base of it along with the EU decrees and the sanctions that go hand in hand with them may at least in philosophically legal terms not achieved any validity. In this context one should perhaps remember the maxim of the German legal philosopher Gustav Ratport. According to which arbitrary positive law is destructive and seeks to circumvent justice. the main factor in the philosophical legal assessments of the listing measures is the absolute arbitrary charactor which is able to seriously compromise the rights of freedom of both the individual and organization sparing no thought at all for the simple concept of a fair trial. The international application of metaphorically named smart sanctions as people like to call them is anything but intelligent with regard to the European terror list unless replacing the law by despotism has become acceptable at core presently. In this precisely the arbitrary character of law characteristic of dictatorships. Their politics are to have unlimited access to intervene so as not to have to erect a legal fence against politics. In systems of these natures the legal principle that law should limit power and politics does not apply. This principle however differentiates between the law and non-law. Should the European Union with the terror list not correct the path to non-law but to continue and extend it to other areas of application there would then be a faithful development to a law which exists only a name. In reality this is indeed emerging as a form of politically enemy law. Following the end of the East - West confrontation and fall of the iron curtain this would be a rout back to the legal understanding of the fallen out political systems which were thought that. To clearly refer to this consequence does not in any way mean simply painting things in black and white. Much more it required that Europe look at itself in political terms not at least through the European constitution approved but not yet enforced of a form of self identication striving towards integration multiculturalism of coming in penetrable borders. If this development is to be found in an undemocratic instrument of non-law then the price will be a serious erosion of citizens civil rights and rights of freedom Thank you 91
The unfair consequences of the EU List

Bernd Husler Attorney, Vice-Chairman of the Berlin Bar Association Madam President Ladies, Gentlemen, Dear Colleagues It was my colleague Dr. Reinhard Marx who should have sat on this panel. But an impediment prevented him from attending at the last minute. So Mr. Marx asked me to present the legal opinion he prepared for this event. Dr. Marx legal opinion concerns the repercussions of the inclusion of the PMOI on the terrorist list of the European Union on the laws of the countries of the EU and more precisely in Germany. It is possible that on rst sight this study concerns the violations of the laws in a single country. However, Dr. Marx decided to study the German laws to derive therefrom criteria for other countries and for international law. Dr. Marx study permitted him to conclude that the inclusion of the PMOI on the European black list violates German law in six domains. The rst point concerns the status of those who had previously been recognized as political refugees. One of the reasons put forth to withdraw status as political refugees is the presence of the PMOI on the terrorist list. The second point endeavors to determine whether the inclusion of the PMOI has had consequences on requests for political refugee status, and if so, if it is warranted. The third point is to determine whether the EUs decision with this list had any inuence whatsoever on the decisions to deport refugees. The fourth point is to determine whether the inclusion of an organization on this list and the restrictions which this generates for its members in the enjoyment of their right of residence, are warranted; The fth point consists in determining whether the EU list has changed the law incorporated in the Geneva Convention on the rights of refugees. The last point concerns the violations of the right to citizenship of the Iranian residents in Germany. In this presentation, I shall dwell on the rst point because there are violations of fundamental rights which inuence all the other topics broached. The laws in the countries of Europe comply with the European Convention on Refugees. Here, mention must be made of Article 33 of Section 2 of the Geneva Convention and Article 1F. According to this Article, any refugee can be deported from a country party to the 92
Convention if it is recognized that he has committed a serious crime, if he represents a threat to the countrys security and society or if in the past he has committed a serious crime and has been convicted of it. Even in the event of deportation, it is important for attorneys to know whether a less severe punishment exists. The denition of danger given in Article 33 of Section 2 of the Geneva Convention is linked to the conduct of the refugee at issue and also the geographic dimension of this danger. This means that the danger must concern the country in which refugee status has been granted. This means that any action outside the country of asylum cannot be considered as a danger for this country. Furthermore, in the United Nations Security Council resolutions and more precisely in the resolution of December 28, 2001, it was specied that the resolution adopted can in no manner generate restrictions to the Geneva Refugee Convention . Thus, in his legal opinion, Dr. Marx concludes that to invoke the presence of the PMOI on the black list cannot be valid for canceling a refugees right to asylum. In the event of the contrary, this is a violation of the law. Similarly, according to Article 28 of the Geneva Convention, a political refugee cannot be deprived of his travel documents. Moreover, the presence on the list should not have any inuence on the right of these persons to obtain a resident permits or citizenship in Germany.
93
EUs Contradiction
Kenneth Lewis President of Lawyers Without Borders So much has been said here this morning which of course I dont want to repeat. We agree on many points and there are many new interesting angles which all of us will take home and consider. I would try just to deal briey with a couple of points. In my paper, I would try specially (to take) to precise the question of so-called denition of terrorism which is contained in both the EU common position and in the regulation 2580 from 2001. And in addition, in broader decision made in 2002, this denition as has been pointed out by colleagues here today is extremely arbitrary. Basically, any act which is included in the criminal codes of our respective countries would be labelled as terrorists if there was any connection to an attempted to inuence a government or international organisation and of course that means, as has been pointed out here, that almost anyone could in fact end-up on the list on the basis of this denition. However, the council of the European Union realized the difculties of this, because precisely people said : yes but with this denition then obviously the resistance against the Nazi occupation in several countries in Europe should have been labelled as terrorist. And obviously, the struggle of the ANC and other people in South Africa against the apartheid should also be labelled as terrorist and so on and so on. And so, the council made a joint declaration in connection with a new document that they put out and which they said that : no no, we didnt mean that in fact this (are) denition of terrorism should not be construed as if it could in campus the resistance in the second world war, nor certain national liberation movements. This means that in reality we have a contradiction already present in the denition of the terrorism itself and the contradiction becomes of course deeper when we see as has been pointed out by other colleges today the inclusion precisely of the PMOI on this list. The main denition takes no consideration what so ever of the context. The declaration says that it is important if we are talking about the defence of democratic institutions and countries with the rule of law. So, in other words, its only in defending countries which have a democratic system and which respect the rule of law that we could even dene something as being terrorist and then the question becomes very precise : what is the theocratic authoritarian mullah regime in Iran ? Does it full ll these qualications or not? What would be the effects of this contradiction in front of the court? This is the debate that we are having here today. So far, the European court of justice has given no wait what so ever there is one decision through these kinds of declarations made by the council. So, we dont know if this ever is going to be 94
changed. This is only one decision it is possible that in the struggle to get the PMOI out of the list that they may be forced to be more concrete because after all, there is this declaration which should be at least have some input on the interpretation of the implementation of this. Of course, the big contradiction is that it is the same council that makes this contradictory statement which also unanimously (because thats the rule of the inclusion) included the PMOI on this list very briey than also on the question of how you get on the list. We know absolutely nothing in fact about how the PMOI or any other organisation was actually included on this list. We can guess, we know for instance that the PMOI was already on the so-called terrorist list in the United Kingdom. So its very likely that they simply presented their entire list to the council and said please take all of our everyone on our list and put on your list which apparently did not happened. Because, the UK list and the Councils list (the EU list) are not identical. So, we dont know how this happened, but I would like to point out that in this law (because it has the effect of law) this regulation 2580 for 2001 its dates quite clearly that the procedure for the inclusion on the list it is efcient for one of the member states to present evidence that there is an investigation of an organisation or an individual or that there is an investigation. There is a suspicion presented against someone or some organisation. This means that there doesnt have to be any substantial evidence what so ever. It would be sufcient to show that the security police of a country have started investigating someone and then you could put them on the list. The big question is what are the remedies? Are there any remedies? And this is the debate that we are having here today. My personal opinion is that we can not ignore any legal avenue. I think it would be a very big mistake. We have not yet in my opinion a nal answer weather the European court of the EU will actually take this case in hand and the outcome we dont know. But at least, it substantively deals with the case. We do not know that yet in the preliminary decision which they have made in some cases we have no clear indication in my mind as to weather the intent to do it or not. Its not clear, so nally I believe that we must make this legal challenge along all of the levels and I would say that nally there is a possibility that within the framework of criminal prosecution which could face individuals and also in the case of refugee law that there will be a possibility of raising all the issues which everyone has claimed here about the European convention of human right. My last point is that the European court of human rights has just a few days ago requested Sweden not to deport a Palestinian precisely because they consider that the legal procedure in Sweden is not complete, is not good enough, to full necessarily the standards contained in the European convention for human rights. I am sorry, I havent time to go on and make some further points but we are in very short of time.
95
PMOI Is A Legitimate Resistance Movement

Osman Soan Juriste irakien In a legal opinion which was worked out by ve of my colleagues and myself we concluded that the Peoples Mojahedin Organization of Iran was a legitimate resistance movement which had nothing to do with terrorism. The conclusion states: 1. Irrespective of the nature of the Iraqi government, Peoples Mojahedin has gone to Iraq with the intention of establishing a democratic and pluralistic rule in Iran and their presence was widely and openly approved. The basis for their relationship with the Iraqi government at the time was a peace plan proposed by Iranian Resistance to stop Iran-Iraq war. The Iraqi side agreed to the proposal as the basis for peace negotiations. 2. The Mojahedin stayed in Iraq for the past 18 years as an independent resistance force. Presence of the Mojahedin in Iraq was on the basis of an ofcially declared mutual agreement with the Iraqi government. The main item in their agreement was to respect the Mojahedins independence and non-interference in each others internal affairs. According to this agreement the Mojahedin has had an independent army on Iraqi soil and ofcially enjoyed the right of possessing weaponry and other military related equipment. 3. During its stay in Iraq, the Mojahedin acted fully in accordance with international laws and Geneva conventions and fulls all the necessary conditions for a legal army according to international norms. The army is commanded by people who take responsibility of those under their command. They openly carry arms and led their operations in accordance with internationally known war regulations. 4. In its war against the Iranian rulers, the National Liberation Army held their POWs independently and under supervision of international bodies and provided their names to the International Red Cross regularly. Red Cross supervised fully the release of all POWs held by the National Liberation Army of Iran in its independent relationship with the Peoples Mojahedin Organization of Iran. 5. On the international status of the Mojahedin in Iraq, Basil Yousef, a distinguished jurist based in Iraq wrote: It is agreed that the Peoples Mojahedin is an armed political organization against the political rule of the Islamic Republic of Iran. It can be described as a military organization that within the framework of enforcement of International Humanitarian Law and according to known international terms is called guerillas. According to 1949 Geneva Convention and in particular the rst 96
protocol added in 1977, members of the organization are treated as combatants involved in an armed struggle on the Iranian soil or combatants who have resorted to an armed uprising within Iran On the legal nature of relations between the Republic of Iraq and PMOI, he wrote: The existing relationship between the Iraqi government and the PMOI started in 1986 and continued until the start of the war in March 2003. These relations are highlighted by important legal characters: a) the PMOI has not been dependent on the Iraqi army politically or militarily. This has been reiterated in more than one statement or declaration by Iraqi ofcials. b) the PMOIs camps and centers were not under the supervision of the Iraqi government. This has been emphasized in direct treatments of inspection groups related to the United Nations with the PMOI as reports by the general secretary of the inspecting committees to the UN Security Council. 6. Finally, declaring the status of all members of the Peoples Mojahedin based in Camp Ashraf in Iraq as protected persons is an indication of the fact that seven rounds of investigations and interrogations of the Mojahedin over a period of one year prove that various American agencies were not able to accuse even a single member of the organization to a slightest act of terrorism. This is yet another solid evidence proving that the Peoples Mojahedin Organization of Iran and its military wing, the National Liberation Army of Iran, is a fully legitimate resistance movement to establish freedom in Iran and the PMOI must be recognized by the government and the multinational forces in Iraq as a legitimate resistance movement.
97
The Presumption of Innocence

Professor Bernard Bouloc Professor of Private Law Ladies, Gentlemen, I shall begin by saying that innocence need not be proven. The presumption of innocence is an essential principle, not only in French criminal procedure but in other legislations. This means that a person can be recognized as guilty of a violation only after a procedure in which his participation in the events has been established on the basis of evidence obtained legally and fairly. The presumption of innocence rst appeared in our Declaration of Human Rights of 1789. It was not mentioned in the code of criminal investigation, a criminal procedure dating back to the 19th century, nor was it reiterated in the code of criminal procedure at the outset. But it appeared in the international declarations of human rights, and of course in the United Nations Universal Declaration, the European Convention for the protection of Human rights and fundamental liberties of 1950 and again of course we nd this presumption of innocence in the United Nations Covenant on civil and political rights. This presumption of innocence was mentioned because perhaps the lawmaker thought that a few general principles had to be reiterated in an article which has become the preliminary article to the Code of Criminal Procedure, the law of June 15, 2000, which introduced this presumption of innocence into the preliminary article of the Code of Criminal Procedure. The precise impact, as we immediately saw, was that there is no need for proof. However, I must say that caution is nonetheless in order. If we wait until nature does its work alone, on the grounds that you are presumed innocent, you may nonetheless encounter a few problems. The best is to endeavor to establish that one is truly innocent, even if it is possible to hide behind a presumption. Experience has taught me this. But I believe that all the attorneys present here and elsewhere know very well that nature must never be left to its own doing, it is sometimes unkind (...) But above all we had the decision in which the Court of Strasbourg condemned France, because, after several days of investigation, a Home Secretary had introduced the party concerned as being the perpetrator of a violation. The police investigation, and then the judicial investigation, the enquiry, then even the judgement phase proved that the person was acquitted while France was condemned because one must not speak in haste even if there are clues, serious cause for suspicion, plausible reasons to believe, as stated in certain legislations, one must not present a person who is a 98
mere suspect, as guilty. Our Court of Cassation derived the consequences of this principle. When we have certain particular legislations which permit so-called independent administrative authorities to impose sanctions in the domain of the stock market for example , or in the laws governing competition, when the presidents of these organizations, in applying the texts, presented a given person as apt to have committed a given offense, the Court of Cassation considered that it had not complied with the presumption of innocence. So I said that French law seeks to reinforce this presumption of innocence. We rst of all had the domestic law of January 1993, and then that of June 15, 2000 which introduces this presumption of innocence in the preliminary article. Henceforth, in the code of civil law we have Article 9-1 according to which any person is entitled to the respect of the presumption of innocence. Any person introduced publicly as guilty of facts under investigation, may request that the judge of summary proceedings insert in the publication announcing this, a press release aimed at putting an end to this undermining of the presumption of innocence. And the law species that this action does not exclude all other action for damages for the prejudice sustained. Clearly, this principle can apply to an organization which must not be introduced as having criminal activities as long as this has not been recognized by a court pursuant to a fair procedure. The fact that an organization be of foreign status, is not apt to deprive it of the benet of this law. Nor can the fact that it be the European authorities who have spread such a suspicion exonerate it from all liability. The law does not stipulate any cause justifying such a violation. Of course, it remains to be determined whether the means offered by French law can function. It is to be feared that legal obstacles exist which will be encountered along the way. Thank you very much.
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Mr. Jean-Pierre Spitzer Following the debates of this panel, you have therefore understood that the framework has been established. We cannot accept in a state governed by the rule of law, such as Europe, our Europe, that decisions can be made without any control, either parliamentary or judiciary. We cannot accept that an organization which meets the criteria of international law, according to which we are dealing not with a terrorist operation, but an armed conict, be qualied as terrorist. Based thereon, international humanitarian law, European law must apply and ensure that all the consequences which have just been described to you on an individual level in each of the States in which the members of the organization confront a repressive power must be defended. And this is the cherry on the cake, the presumption of innocence, solemnly reasserted in our country not long ago as Professor Bouloc has just reminded us, must mean that a member of the PMOI cannot be accused of being a terrorist before the judge has said he can. This is what I shall retain on your behalf from these debates which could last much longer. I now have the great honor of giving the oor to Mrs. Radjavi, President elect of the national Council of Iranian Resistance.
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Defend the right of the Iranian nation

Maryam Rajavi The President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
Ladies and gentlemen, I offer my congratulations to you the standard-bearers of human rights in the homeland to human rights on the anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is indeed a pleasure to be among you on this day. Human rights advocates, from whatever nation and country, devote their lives to human rights. Allow me to begin with honoring the memory of Prof. Kazem Rajavi, the great martyr to the cause of human rights and the Iranian Resistance. A professor of law in Switzerland and Irans rst ambassador to the United Nations European Headquarters following the 1979 revolution, Dr. Rajavi deed those who stole the Iranian Revolution. Tehrans terrorist agents assassinated him with a barrage of forty bullets in April 1990 near home in Geneva. A year before his martyrdom, Dr. Rajavi had said, We write the history of human rights in our country with our blood. I honoring his memory, I pay homage to all the martyrs to the cause of freedom and human rights. On this occasion, this exhibition has provided glimpses of the clerical regimes human rights violations. We see pictures of execution, stoning, limb amputation, eye gouging and ogging in public. But how could one portray the enormous pain and suffering of a tortured nation under the clutches of a theocracy in an exhibition? How could one picture the pain of an execution victim in his last moments while his esh is ripped apart by the lashes of the whip and as he awaits the noose? How could one picture the pain of a victim suspended headrst and ogged in the head and face? How could one picture the pain of a 16-year-old girl, who after having been raped by the judge, is hanged on the charge of moral corruption? How could one picture the pain of woman conned to a sack and chest-deep in a ditch, under a barrage of stones? And how could one convey the pain of freedom-loving Iranians who are tortured, not to force them into confessions, but to coerce them to change their minds and thoughts? No, Never! 103
But this exhibition reects only a glimpse of the enormous pain in my tortured homeland. There have been 174 forms of torture documented in Iranian prisons. The reality, however, is that Iran is a big prison. The entire Iranian nation in all hours of the day is suffering under suppression, humiliation and torture that have become law. Your sympathy for the Iranian people brings to mind a poem by one of my homelands greatest poets, Sadi: Of one body are human beings Of one gem are they in creation As one limb endures pain, Other limbs do not rest idly Indeed, today, I entered this exhibition with the burden of the pain my country has endured. But in the images of the Irans tortured and executed women and men, I could not but recall the book Letters by Those Executed, in the French Resistance and the words of Louis Aragon. The introduction to the book says, This collection is a blood-soaked testament to the faith and hopes of the martyrs and the victims. Historians of the future must read it in order to explain and express the spirit of the French Resistance because it shows that all of them, from 17-year-olds to those in their fties, showed the same feeling when meeting death. All of them belittled death. These were the very people French Nazis described as terrorists. And I add, it was they who actually drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Of course, this is an incomplete mission, because human rights abuses and suppressive labeling still continue. The Bird of Dawn has her throat slit, and yet In this crimson river, her song continues to resonate Yes, my dear friends, Sufferings continue and today we are looking at a regime, whose record in violating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights no other country in the world has matched in the past 57 years. The Right to Life is one of the most fundamental rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But the Iranian people are shackled by a regime, which is the undisputed record holder in executions. This document represents Khomeinis written fatwa to massacre Mojahedin political prisoners. It is a decree for mass murder according to which, 30,000 defenseless prisoners were massacred in 1988. The savagery was so shocking that then-Khomeinis designated successor voiced protest and wrote many innocent people have been executed and that the execution of several thousand people in several days would have adverse consequences. The number of political executions under the clerical regime exceeds 120,000. The 104
details on more than 21,000 of them are collected in this book. Killing the Right to Life is not limited to Iran and Iranians. The export of death and terror is an indispensable part of the mullahs mindset and conduct, reected in the fatwa to murder the British author, Salman Rushdie and his publishers, in 450 terrorist assaults outside Irans borders, and in the export of fundamentalism to Iraq with the ultimate aim of devouring that country. The preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights underscores complete gender equality. But Khomeinis fatwa dictates expressing abhorrence toward gender equality. Accordingly, the clerics Supreme Cultural Council has consistently rejected the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Woman as a conspiracy by the colonialists and contrary to religion and the State. Article three of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person. But the ruling theocracy has enacted laws that have destroyed the most rudimentary citizens rights and tranquility even within the connes of their homes. Directives are issued for even the form and color of clothing. Article ve of the Declaration underscores, No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. But the Iranian nation is the prisoner of a regime, which according to Khomeinis fatwa, extracts the blood of victims before execution for wounded Revolutionary Guards. The Iranian nation is prisoner to a regime, whose Revolutionary Guards rape virgin girls before execution. Article nine of the Declaration states, No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile During the mullahs 25-year reign, more than half-a-million human beings have been imprisoned for political reasons. With respect to other arrests, the Judiciary Chief stated every year, we imprison 600,000 people. We are talking about prisons that are full of crimes, disease, moral corruption and mischief. Article 18 and 19 of the Declaration reiterate the right to freedom of opinion and expression as well as freedom of religion. In Iran, however, the ofcial punishment for converting to another religion is death. Reporters without Borders noted that Iran was the biggest prison for journalists. According to Article 21 of the Declaration, The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures. In Iran, however, there is no free election. Based on the inviolable constitution, the Executive, the Judiciary and the Legislature are completely controlled by the Supreme Leader. According to the Iranian regimes constitution, this principle cannot be change even through a referendum. In a nutshell, the structure, the constitution and the letter and spirit of laws of the 105
state, totally contradict the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In one word, under the clerical rule, violation of human rights is the law and respect for human rights in the violation of law. Dear friends, The clerical regime justies its enmity toward human rights under the cloak of a distorted Islam. As a Muslim woman, I underscore that the mullahs ruling Iran are not Islams spokesmen, but its enemies. The Quran holds in high esteem human rights and in its own words, humankind, regardless of religious afliation, gender, and race, color of skin or nationality. It recognizes piety (meaning emancipation and sense of responsibility to liberate man from shackles that exploit him or her) as the sole criterion for advantage. (Surely, the most noble among you in the eyes of God is the most pious among you). Islam recognizes the right to life and immunity from torture. It considers violating these rights as being among the most cardinal sins. The Quran reiterates that anyone who deliberately murders an innocent human being has in effect murdered all humanity. Contrary to the mullahs treatment of the followers of other religions, the Quran unequivocally emphasizes the sanctity of the right of Jews, Christians, followers of other religions and those who have converted their religion). It states clearly that there is no compulsion in religion. The clerical regime denies the universality of human rights and the principle of popular sovereignty. But, Imam Ali, the Prophets son-in-law and the rst Shiite Imam, emphasizes that while differences of opinion may exist, the common denominator in human creation is the fundamental pillar for the sanctity of human rights. In his famous letters to one of his appointed governors, Malek Ashtar of Egypt, Imam Ali wrote, Citizens are divided into two groups, either your brothers in faith or your brothers in creation. He emphasized, Fill your heart with mercy, compassion and kindness to the masses of people. Dear friends, One cannot negotiate over human rights. However, European countries have taken human values and human rights to the altar of trade and commerce. They have been engaged in dialogue over human rights and shameful deals with the most dangerous enemy of our time. The apologists for such a policy say isolating the mullahs would escalate human rights abuses and dialogue has a moderating impact. In reality, however, the mullahs have taken maximum advantage of dialogue to further suppress the Iranian people. During eight years of engagement with former President Hashemi Rafsanjani and seven years of dialogue with the current President Khatami, the mullahs did not spare any inhuman conduct. Yet, the European Union agreed to back track from tabling a resolution in the Human Rights Commission to censure human rights abuses in Iran. 106
By labeling the Iranian peoples Mojahedin as terrorist, it provided the most effective means to the regime in Tehran to suppress its own citizens. Ofcial European reports indicate the futility of negotiations and the deterioration in the situation of human rights. But the ruling religious dictatorship is pleased over its diplomatic accomplishments. Deputy Foreign Minister for European Affairs stated two years ago, Our other achievement was the EUs agreement to include the Peoples Mojahedin in the EU terrorist lists, which was followed up by openings with respect of economy and facilitating Irans exports to Europe. I do not know whether European policy makers are congratulating or consoling each other over these economic openings and blood-soaked contracts. I do know this, however, that under Khatami, the number of stonings and public executions increased. Just this week, 12 people were hanged in public to intimidate the public. And here is a picture of these executions. Western governments sent goodwill gestures to the so-called moderate mullah at the expense of labeling the Iranian peoples legitimate resistance. These concessions, however, beneted the most extremist faction of the regime. They have lled the Parliaments seats with the Revolutionary Guards and Judiciary henchmen. Those involved in the massacre of 1988 and in the chain murders of 1998 were assigned to sit on the Bench. From day one, the Iranian Resistance had said that Khatami had neither the power nor the desire to reform the velayat-e faqih regime. Four days ago, on December 6, the Students Day, the students staged an antigovernment demonstration to protest the presence of Khatami at Tehran University. There were shouting, enough of lies, Where are our freedoms? And Khatami threatened to expel them from the room He said, I have come to preserve the state. If you are the peoples representatives, we are the enemies of the people. These scenes were yet another political funeral for Khatamis deception. Today, European policy makers are engaged in shameful negotiations and deal making with the most extremist faction of the regime. This shocks any conscientious human being. A bewildered International Federation of Human Rights has described this deal, namely keeping an organization in the list of terrorist organizations in return for a nuclear concession by Tehran proved that, regardless of any judgment on that organization, this list was arbitrary and politically motivated. The Federation described this deal as humiliating all principles of international law. It declared that the EU troikas commitment to respect the law of the Iranian state meant accepting the lack of democracy, arbitrary arrests, the closure of newspapers, death sentences and torture that have become routine. Let me warn that striking a deal with the mullahs to label the Mojahedin as terrorist in return for Iran abandoning its nuclear weapons project will not bring security to 107
the West. But, from the very outset, this deal sanctions crackdown on a legitimate resistance by the bloodthirsty mullahs and auctions away Europes dignity and the sanctity of international law. Since the birth of international law, engraved in a none-aggression pact between the conqueror of the town of Lagash and the people of Uma in the Mesopotamia some 5,000 years ago, no such blatant violation of international law has been witnessed. Some 208 years ago, Guillaume Antoine Olivier, Frances special envoy to Iran wrote, Is it wise to invest in a country that is ruled by the most ruthless dictatorship, where its totalitarian ruler is always paranoid about his power? That King was murdered by his own men that same year. Today, however, a group of criminals has imposed the most ruthless reign in Iran. Fifty-one United Nations resolutions point to the nature of these rulers as the association of criminals who rule Iran. One must ask Tehran trade partners the same question asked by Frances special envoy 208 years ago: Is it wise to invest on a regime that has the worst despotic rule? Dear friends, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights stated that when all avenues are closed to a nation, that nation has the right to rebel against outright tyranny. The National Council of Resistance of Iran, the manifestation of the legitimate and organized rebellion and resistance of the Iranian people against the oppression of a usurper and inhuman regime, has declared its commitment to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations Charter. The Iranian people and Resistance are determined to free their homeland from the fetters of religious dictatorship and usher in the sovereignty of the people and human dignity. Along this path, I appeal to you and all freedom-loving people and human rights advocates to: 1. Condemn human rights in Iran relentlessly, because the human rights of the Iranian people are being violated relentlessly. 2. Rise in defense of the rights of Iranian women who are facing dual torture and oppression under a gender apartheid regime. 3. Defend the human rights of Iranian youths, students, writers and artists. Their outcries have echoed across Iran against the suppression of freedoms and Khatamis deception. 4. Rise in defense of the rights of Iranian prisoners, especially political prisoners who are on death row. 5. Support the demands of the Iranian people and Resistance to bring before an international trial the principals and perpetrators of the massacre of political prisoners. They committed a crime against humanity but are continuing to violate human rights 108
as they rule. 6. Defend the right of the Iranian nation and their combatant children to resist against oppression. Not allow this great human rights be sacriced at the altar of trade and commerce with the worst violator of human rights. These are the demands of a blood-soaked resistance, the demands of the combatants of freedom and all those victims whose voice was silenced and whose pens were broken under the theocratic regime. These are the demands of 120,000 martyrs to the cause of freedom who were either executed or killed under torture without trial or after kangaroo courts. In the face of this inhuman regime, the Iranian people need your solidarity. They will never forget it. Thank you very much.
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Mr. Jean-Pierre Spitzer
Mrs. President, It is with a certain degree of emotion that I take the oor to speak to you, on my own behalf and on that of all my colleagues, and the professors here present. When you thank us for our courage, our dignity, it seems to me that even if we deem we are serving your cause as our foremost duty which is the duty to defend courage and dignity, yours are incomparably greater than what we have to offer you and your people, unjustly massacred and compelled to live in exile. It is hardly anything, and we are proud and honored to serve your cause.
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A political error
Yves Bonnet Former director of the DST, ex-prefect, ex-member of Parliament Mrs. President Ladies and Gentlemen You, Madam, stated in terms both just and heart-felt, the unacceptable injustice consisting in registering unilaterally, and for low mercantile but otherwise politically unintelligent reasons, the Peoples Mojahedin organization on a list of terrorist organizations. I cannot review the entire debate and all the pertinent and irrefutable legal arguments which contradict this position, but I would like to present the viewpoint of a practitioner given that some time ago, in its time, I was responsible for the ght against terrorism in my country which is France; The Peoples Mojahedin of course existed during the early 1980s, and I practiced between 1982 and 1985. At the time, there was no thought of registering them on a list of terrorist organizations, we already had enough to do. It was never denied during these latter years, but on our part it would have been an extremely heavy fault to forget a terrorist organization in the battle we were waging. But during those years, and up until recent times, there was never any thought of considering the Peoples Mojahedin as a terrorist organization. This I can testify to without a doubt. Otherwise, call me an imbecile, because I would obviously have risked handing my dear old country over to an organization apt to commit attacks. No! The only attacks we had to deal with at the time, the only undermining of the security of French citizens, of the sovereignty of France originated in a State which is not only a quasi-ofcial terrorist state, but one which organizes the taking of hostages. Let us not forget the extraordinary violation of international law of taking hostage 55 American diplomats in disrespect of all conventions, and let us not forget either the sordid dealings which ended unfortunately for Mr. Carter, and fortunately for Mr. Reagan, and then Iron gate and the resumption of almost normal relations between the United States and Iran. What I would like to testify to today is precisely this Realpolitik, this requirement which we all had of not being mistaken in our targets, because you know that the police forces devoted to the ght against terrorism cannot be increased indenitely in a country such as France. Unfortunately we cannot devote all the means we would like to to this ght. We therefore obviously have no right to make errors, and must consequently examine very lucidly the reasons for which an organization can be considered to be a terrorist organization and a threat to our country. An organization which commits no act of violence beyond our countrys borders 111
and which within its own borders commits no violent acts against civilian populations cannot and must not be considered as terrorist. This just to say that common sense merges with legal considerations, and legal considerations merge with the absolute necessity for a strong Nation, for a democratic Nation, to guarantee security without making any mistakes, and in the respect of human rights, womens rights, the rights of all peoples, of all organizations composing them. In the little white book distributed to us, which contains only purely factual information, and obviously only a certain number of statements on the part of political leaders or professionals regarding the Peoples Mojahedin Organization, we preceded it with this quote from General de Gaulle which we tend to evoke perhaps a little too often in our demonstrations in France, but which is eloquent: the future lasts for a long time, anything can happen, including the fact that an act which is made with honor and honesty proves in the end to be a good political investment. It is in you, Mrs. President, that we would like to make this sound political investment.
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Human Rights cannot be measured

President of the Bar, Mario Stasi Former President of Paris Bar Association Mrs. President Ladies, Gentlemen The last time we met to evoke the fate of the Peoples Mojahedin was in Auvers sur Oise, on a sunny day, for popular festivities. The Iranian people was present and we heard its call, we who had come as friends, sometimes as curious onlookers, already convinced, because we knew that it was the voice and heart of courage which, as you said, we would hear. Today, it is the voice of law which we have heard. And it was a good thing that, in a meeting such as this, as persons engaged in their political action, but also in their profession as everyday jurists, we realize that human rights cannot be measured. That there is no violation of the slightest of human rights that does not undermine human rights as a whole. And what are the violations committed against an entire people. In Auvers sur Oise I mentioned the situation of the Iranians of Archraf. I am thinking of them at this moment, I am thinking of them because they are suffering, because they are isolated, because they are far from their land, close-by but far due to their political estrangement, and would like to return to their country as you yourself would, Madam. Therefore, I wanted to bear this testimony. I believe that all ideas, when put forth in a timely manner, can one day triumph. Generous ideas end-up overturning mountains, which we would like to put on the course leading to where we want them to go. And you incarnate these ideas, and we bear witness thereto, ideas that we would like to defend with you. Nothing is more terrible, I believe it was Victor Hugo who said so, than an idea which comes in its time. You are of our time, Madam, and we are beside you.
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Shameful bickering
Patrick Baudouin Attorney, Honorary President of the International Federation of Leagues of Human Rights Madam, Ladies, Gentlemen Dear friends, A few very brief observations. Earlier we spoke at length of the presumption of innocence. I believe that certain persons present here, and Mrs. Radjavi in particular, must sometimes doubt the application of this principle, when we are aware of the conditions under which the raids of June 2003, an operation which does not honor our country, took place in France,. In line with this operation, we learned via the AFP press release the shocking news that France and two other countries of the European Community proposed a deal of sorts to Iran consisting in saying: if you make concessions on the nuclear program, in exchange we guarantee, so to speak, that we will maintain the PMOI on the list of terrorist organizations. What could be more shameful! What could be more shameful! Either the PMOI is a terrorist organization, and that cant be bargained with, and the best evidence that it isnt one in the eyes of the very ones who are bargaining is that they imply that if Iran does not make any concessions in nuclear weapons, then it could be said that the PMOI no longer need appear on the list of terrorist organizations, or the PMOI is not a terrorist organization and the scandal is even greater, if they are exchanging the maintaining of this organization on this list in for pseudo hoped-for diplomatic or military advantages. The trap therefore is closing. I believe that here we nally have the proof, beyond the very convincing comments made by the various jurists, of the lack of grounds behind the charges against the PMOI. So, just two additional observations. Of course as an attorney but also as Honorary president of the International Federation of Human Rights, like my friend Henri Leclerc, it is on the level of principle that we are ghting, and on the level of principle, it is entirely inadmissible that an organization, or individual, can be incriminated in the framework of this list of allegedly terrorist organizations, without any details at the outset as to the reasons for which it appears on this list and without then offering the possibility of challenging the decision which was made. And it is all the more serious in that as an attorney, I can testify thereto, there are several of us who can, we are then told as though it were a fait accompli that since the PMOI is on the list of terrorist organizations, the members of the PMOI themselves are terrorists, they can no longer benet from 114
any presumption of innocence, but on the contrary, and alas it is too often the case, they are the victims of a sort of presumption of guilt; So I shall conclude by saying to you that on the behalf of the FIDH, which I represent also, and once again in my capacity as attorney, one can only recall that the necessary ght against terrorism cannot lead to the endorsement of regimes which are terrorist themselves, any more than to the pronouncing of exceptional measures which disregard individual and collective liberties. There is an American attorney who is trying to combat what is happening in Guantanamo and whose comments could be read in the newspaper Le Monde, and who said that the slightest undermining of a fundamental right threatened all liberties. And this is not a minor violation of rights, but a major one. Liberties are not only threatened, they are thwarted.
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Purely A Well-meaning Act of Complicity with the Iranian Regime

Franois Hritier Ethnologist, Professor at the Collge de France Mrs. President, Gentlemen and Dear Colleagues I would like to come back to the point discussed by the previous speaker. And to react as a French citizen to the recent negotiations conducted by France, Germany and Great Britain with Iran in order, and I quote, to develop its civilian nuclear program, which recently took place in October. The essential political aspect of this global proposal consists in this article: We shall continue to consider the Peoples Mojahedin as a terrorist organization thereby giving the Iranian government in power the legitimate right to prosecute, punish, and openly execute opponents of the regime in the framework of a cooperation for the prevention and repression of terrorist acts, cooperation recognized by the European Union. It is on this particular point that I wish to dwell somewhat. It is for economic reasons and as a gesture of good political and diplomatic will toward Iran that the organization of the peoples Mojahedin was included on this list. Allow me to remind you that in July 2004, the FBI itself concluded following months of investigations that nothing permitted accusing this group of terrorist activities. As their acts and the various testimonies reveal, it is a banned organization which legitimately opposes the Islamic fundamentalist regime which controls their country. This legitimate opposition is enlightened, democratic and open to the equality of the sexes. It recommends a secular government in lieu of the current obscurantist theocratic regime. The simple statement: We shall continue to consider the Peoples Mojahedin as a terrorist organization reveals, on the contrary, the possibility of not considering them as such according to the truth and law and to strike them from this list. To maintain them thereon then becomes a pure act of well-meaning collusion with respect to the scheme, brandished like bate. I call that horse-trading. I ask my fellow citizens to realize this and to refuse to allow people to speak this way collectively in their name. It is convenient for totalitarian regimes to call their opponents terrorists. While the Iranian Mojahedin are the rst to suffer from the situation created for them, exiled, pursued, imprisoned, executed; while they are ghting to install in their country a democratic regime similar to ours; can we accept without saying a word
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that they ofcially don a label permitting their repression urbi et orbi with the blessing of international legitimacy? Where is law? Where are justice and morality? Should all this fade before the demands of diplomacy and trade? The only policy henceforth worthy of pursuit, which appears to me to comply with the rights to justice and truth, would be to ofcially withdraw the Iranian Mojahedin movement from the black list. This moreover would be the only political gesture apt to be understood by the theocratic Iranian power and to make it back off. Thank you.
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A Short-sighted Policy
Mogens Camre MEP (Denmark)
Mrs. President, Mr. Chairman, honoured colleagues and friends, ladies and gentlemen. First of all I wish to thank the PMOI for this invitation to speak today to this prominent academic conference of personalities and representatives of lawyers organisations. I dont have a bad conscience in the sense that I am a member of the European Parliament because members of parliament have not been asked to vote for or against any individual or organisation which is contained in the list. But a number of us have formed the working group Friends of a Free Iran to ght against the un-based inclusion of the PMOI in the list set up in accordance to Council directive 2580/2001, the so-called list of terrorist organisations. At the same time we protest against the weak position of the European Parliament and the European Union as a whole towards the Iranian regime which is constantly violating human rights. I have tried to get an answer from the commission to explain why the PMOI is in the list. I have also got a written answer. It says practically nothing, but let me quote just a few words: These decisions are not taken on the basis of any proposal made by the Commission. Its taken entirely by the Council and the negotiations of the Council are secret. Therefore the Commission cannot comment upon the possibilities of having persons, groups, or units added or deleted from such lists. The Commission takes note that the mutual attitude contains a number of criteria that should be fullled and that the above organisation, (that is the PMOI) as a result hereof, is still in the list. The question that I feel we should raise to the European Union is the following; how does the EU believe it could help bring freedom and democracy to the people of Iran, acting in accordance with the wishes of the dictators in Tehran, blacklisting the opponents of the dictators? We know the policy of Major EU countries is to strike commercial deals with the mullahs, and lately as mentioned by several colleagues here before, to obtain some guarantees to avoid the production of nuclear weapons and pay for both the export orders and the promises against the proliferation of nuclear arms; among others to suppress the enemies of the mullahs. That is certainly not in accordance with the rule of law. I feel that the European Union leads a very short-sighted policy which harms the Iranian people and subsequently also harms the interests of the European people. Its shameful for Europe not to join the ght against the regime that violates all the values which we claim that the European Union has been built on. We should ght politically 118
and certainly also at the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg and possibly at the EU Court in Luxembourg to change the un-based blacklisting of the PMOI, and we should do what we can to overthrow the dictators in Tehran. I can assure you that most Europeans stand behind you who ght for a free, modern, and democratic Iran. Thank you.
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The ght against Islamic fundamentalism identies itself with the ght to introduce democracy
Sid Ahmed Ghozali Former Prime Minister of Algeria Thank you for inviting me and allowing me to speak. I shall rst of all salute Mrs. Radjavi, President of the Free Republic of Iran, Mr. Radjavi, President of the National Council of Iranian Resistance. I wish to share with them my total solidarity because the cause for which the Iranians have sacriced so much is the same as mine, and the same as all of those who, in all Moslem countries, are confronted with the misdeeds of the obscurantist, fascist, fundamentalist ideology and non-law which prevails in our regions. We are speaking of the ght against fundamentalist terrorism which identies itself in both ways with the battle for the introduction and re-establishment of law and democracy in the region. Mr. President, Allow me to pay tribute to all the eminent experts and jurists who have worked on this problem. I cannot express as well as you that this decision to register the PMOI on the list of terrorist organizations is totally illegal. You said so before me and more eloquently. Moreover, it is a decision which weakens us considerably and here is the paradox: it weakens considerably even those who are the sole ones ghting terrorism. And this is what reveals the hypocrisy of the States which led to this ostracism of the Peoples Mojahedin organization. They display, in their opinion, a desire to ght terrorism, but at the same time, they endeavor to weaken the forces capable of combating and eradicating this terrorism. Mr. President, thank you very much for the work you are doing, thank you very much for your support of a cause which concerns not only us, it concerns you too, Europeans, because it is to you that the States lie to conceal the true motivations which incite them to act and exploit the feeling of fear in western thinking, in order to pursue strategic economic goals which are not totally that which they purport them to be. Thank you.
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An Unjust and Arbitrary Designation

Roy Beggs, Member of Parliament, UK
Mister Chairman, Madame Rajavi, distinguished panel, ladies and gentleman, As a member of the United Kingdom Parliament, who has been familiar with the situation in Iran and the Iranian Resistance for some years, its a pleasure for me to be with you today. As you all know the issue of terrorism has for a number of years been at the forefront of international concern. And of course this concern has intensied since the tragic events of 11th September. The war on terrorism is a legitimate struggle. But this is essential that in this war we guard against the dangers of either unnecessarily sacricing the rights of individuals or using legitimate resistance movements such as the Peoples Mojahedin Organisation of Iran as bargaining chips in trade deals or other negotiations with rogue nations such as the theocratic regime in Iran. The crimes of the Iranian regime at home and abroad are no doubt. But it is shocking that over the past 25 years, they have executed over 120,000 members and sympathisers of the PMOI including the execution of 30,000 political prisoners in a 3 months period in the summer of 1988. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch stated earlier this year that the human rights situation in Iran is worst now than it has been over the past seven years. Arbitrary arrests of dissidents including students and journalists, inhumane punishments such as public oggings, amputation of limbs, gouging out of eyes, public hanging and stoning to death are still common place in Iran. One only has to look at the public hanging of a 16 year old girl in Iran a few weeks ago for what was described as acts incompatible with chastity. There can be no doubt that the Iranian regime is a tyrannical and oppressive regime, as such the Iranian resistance and the Iranian people are entitled to exercise their right as the last resort to resist against the tyranny and the oppression. Apart from their human rights abuses at home, the Iranian regime has for many years been recognized as the most active state sponsor of terrorism, having been responsible for over 450 terrorist operations across the world. They have been involved in the export of this terrorism most recently to Iraq. It is well known that the Iranian regime has sent tens of thousands of their revolutionary guards and mullahs into Iraq in order to ferment unrest and an attempt to interfere in Iraqs internal affairs by trying to create a satellite Islamic fundamentalist state in Iraq. In such circumstances, it is bizarre that my own government and the European Union generally have bowed to the demands of the mullahs to place the Iranian opposition in the list 121
of terrorist organizations. This is an unjust label which has been arbitrarily applied. As such, I along with many of my colleagues from the United Kingdom Parliament call for the removal of PMOI from all terror lists. I have travelled to this conference from Northern Ireland to register my support for PMOI and to register my sympathies with the victims and the bereaved families of those brutalized by the Iranian regime. I will return to the United Kingdom reinforced by what I have heard today and will seek with my colleagues to further support the PMOI in achieving its objective and getting its name removed from the terror list.
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A Message from US
Professor Schneebaum Professor Steven Schneebaum, of the Washington-based law rm Greenberg Traurig, is an adjunct professor of law at Johns Hopkins and Cornell universities. He is also chairman of the executive committee of the British-American Project Thank you Mister Chairman, Ms Rajavi, and friends. Let me bring you some perspective on this issue from the United States. I dont think I need to go any further to persuade this audience because I think we are all in agreement on a couple of things : That the inclusion of the PMOI on anyones terrorist list is inappropriate as a matter of fact and unjustied as a matter of law. So I would take that as given. It seems to me that there have been two themes that we have heard this morning and both of them resonate in the American experience as well. One is that there is no generally agreed denition of terrorism by which an informed decision can be made about the classication of this organisation and the other is that in European law there is no effective control, there is no governance, there is no watchdog that stands ready to overturn classications on the grounds that they are irrational as they are in this case. Those two propositions true in the Europe and I fear I must say true in the United States as well lead to a third proposition, it seems to me, which is that the determinations of who is and who is not a terrorist organisation must be political in character, they must be driven by political concerns. They cannot be driven by legal ones and that I submit is why they so readily transgress the basic human rights about which many of our speakers talked this morning such as the presumption of innocence or the freedom of association. Well we are seeing exactly these issues in the United States as well. The designation of the PMOI and then later its afliated organisations as terrorists in the United States was made pursuant to a specic statutory mandate which allows those designations only if certain criteria are met and among those criteria is the one that says that American citizens must be in danger of acts of violence from this organisation. How in the world would anyone think that an American citizen is at risk through the activities of the PMOI? Well believe it or not, and as an American humorist would say I am not making this up, the formal certication by the Secretary of State designating the PMOI as a terrorist organisation said that Americans were at risk through the activities of the PMOI because an American tourist in Iran might be injured during a military operation organized by the PMOI out of Iraq. Well, that is so bafing, I mean after all I think if one listed the international tourist destinations for Americans, you know Barbados would be up there, Paris would be there, London, Montreal, I dont think Isfahan would gure very high in the list of American tourist destinations, much
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less places in Iran that might be targets of legitimate military operations. So there is not even a pretence to the rule of law being the governing principle of the designation in the United States. Now, what this mean, also we know from sad experience that the courts in United States will not intervene in reviewing these determinations. The PMOI itself and the NCRI itself attempted to persuade the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia circuit that the designation of those two organisations as terrorist under the law was unjustied, and they failed not on substantive reasons of course, but on procedural reasons. They failed because of the doctrine that says that the President of the United States and the executive branch of his government are entitled to enormous deference in the conduct of the foreign affairs. Thats a big issue about which I can go on and lengths, and course are taught in American law schools on that question, but in this case we have seen again and again the courts refraining from intervention to overturn determinations of terrorist status even when they are so palpably wrong. Now yesterday, as one of the speakers mentioned this morning, we saw a glimmer of hope. Judge Jim Robertson of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia yesterday enjoined the conduct of military commission trials at Guantanamo on the grounds that they are inconsistent with the Geneva Conventions and that the Geneva Conventions are part of the United States law. One federal Judge sitting in Washington DC has brought this entire charade at Guantanamo, at least temporarily, crashing to a halt and that gives us some glimmer of hope that the judiciary will be willing to take on these issues and to intervene. I dont think theres a lot of room for hope but there is some, and that means however that although we should by all means pursue judicial remedies. The main problem, the main eld of combat remains the political and unfortunately that leads to these conclusions: in the United States at least, the legal propositions that we have heard from this panel would be unlikely, in me view, to persuade the government to do something about the designation of the PMOI. The organisation is up for re-designation in the summer of 2005 and it is conceivable that thought the political pressures the United States and Bush administration recently re-elected would be willing to right this wrong. But the real problem it seems to me and the real problem we have all talking about is the concept of this terrorist lists in the rst place. These lists, the idea that the executive branch can announce for its own reasons not disclosed that adherence to a particular philosophy is illegal, and brings with it all kind of negative consequences is unacceptable in a democratic society. Not only is it unacceptable however it is also unnecessary because when we have to confront real terrorist threats, organisations that do threaten and do carry out their threats against our society and our lives such as Al-Qaeda, we have means to address those problems, we are exercising those means right now, in Afghanistan at least thought multilateral force. That is the proper approach. There is no need for this sort of thing, this sort of listing of forbidden organisations, but so long as these lists exist all of us have the obligation of making sure that they conform to reality as much as possible and that is the message that I would take back to Washington. Thanks. 124
A Scandal
Franois Colcombet Former judge and member of Parliament Madam, Mr. President, Indeed, it is as a former magistrate and parliamentarian that I am going to say a few words. A magistrate is someone different from a lawyer. Magistrates are compelled to display a certain degree of detachment. To have at least the appearances of objectivity; in reality they are sometimes very skeptical. The principle recalled earlier, which it is always useful to evoke, the presumption of innocence, must always twist their ears. For years in our country and in many other countries, the principle was the opposite: every citizen was presumed guilty and had to prove to the judge that he was innocent. When I say this, I am speaking of what happens in many countries, in particular in this country of the mullahs of which we are speaking. But many others, even at home, and to a certain extent earlier a professor reminded us of this, this principle is completely reversed. Therefore, a judge must know this, must tell himself this, and I tell it to myself. I presided over the judges association to protect myself so to speak from these temptations and then, when I was elected member of parliament, I was of those who were intent that the principle be reasserted in the laws and therefore more uniquely in legal works. I believe that I have done my duty in this respect, although I am still rather skeptical as to the results. I was a parliamentarian twice. For one term as a member of the legislative body, I was in clodhoppers, in other words I obeyed the government, and for another, I attempted to get a little perspective in relation to the French constitution, because it still displays what the American professor referred to earlier: the power which Presidents and prime Ministers have, or governments at any rate, the executive power, to deal with everything which is important and nally to leave it up to the Parliament to settle supercial business. In France, we can spend days, months, talking about the date of the opening of the duck-hunting season, but we absolutely fail to discuss Frances commitments in Rwanda, in the Ivory Coast, which we shall discuss only when things get very bad, and a fortiori the entry of the peoples Mojahedin on the list of terrorists; never will a parliamentarian be consulted on this issue. And I am of those who believe that this constitution which we have in France should be revised on this point and that the parliament should, at some given time, have more power. I chair the Convention for the 6th Republic which is attempting precisely to place the parliament at the center of the debate and at the heart of the control which 125
is to be exerted over these essential issues. These are the few words I wanted to say. During this previous term, I presided the group of parliamentarians who are members of the League of Human Rights. It is in this capacity that I was in contact with you. Judge, parliamentarian, provincial parliamentarian, I looked at you from a distance telling myself that basically all these problems are far off, and are much less important that the things we have to deal with daily. I must say, Madam, and want to say to some of you here that I have often been moved by the description by some of you of what the true situation really is. I found people with whom I had a great deal of afnity, who had an education which enabled me to communicate with them and who told me my entire family has disappeared, not only did they disappear, but they were tortured, and here I am in this country, what would you do if you were me? You would do just as I have, you would try to overturn this regime, you would try to resist and it is this, I believe, that should be heard, because anyone of us could be in this situation at one time or another. There is a human reality behind all this and I believe that your movement has conveyed this very strongly and I would like to testify to that here. I thought, and I was wrong, they are lucky to be in France, they have found shelter. But there were two events: the registration on this list which is truly scandalous and then there is also the burlesque event of 2003: the intervention of a judge, who in fact intervened at the request of the political party in power, in an attempt to incriminate you even more in the eyes of public opinion. These two things reveal that even in a country such as France, liberties must be defended and my presence here bears witness to the fact that an old judge and former parliamentarian, in any event someone who wants to maintain relations with this countrys civilian society, considers that it is a good cause and that we must take up your cause, and defend you to the best of our ability.
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Aernoon Session
Chaired by Bertrand Favreau
A decisive bale for international law

William Bourdon Attorney Mr. President, thank you. Mrs. President Ladies, Gentlemen, Thank you for having afforded me the opportunity to say a few words to open this afternoon session. I understand that this mornings work and contributions were very fruitful and recalled, if necessary, that international law, universal law, are obviously the allies of the clients whom I have had the honor, along with some of my colleagues, to represent since the Auvers-sur-Oise operation 18 months ago. Very rapidly, I would like to say that the themes tackled this morning, and which shall be this afternoon, reveal what everyone senses and touched upon: the battles fought by the Mojahedin are combats fought in the name of universal values and for the entire international civilian society. Why is this? Because by barely depicting things, one could say that the Auvers-sur-Oise operation which took place 18 months ago is, in some ways, the expression of the fact that various legitimate movements putting forth a legitimate resistance to dictatorship and to executioners of all ilks, have been and are in danger of becoming the collateral victims of the attacks of September 11th. Why collateral victims? Because it is patent that political justications have regained new impetus since 9/11. The war we are waging is a decisive confrontation which will determine the fate of international law. A decisive confrontation between the reasons of State, the administrative reasons as Anatole France put it, and Rule of Law. Between administrative logic and judiciary logic. And it is clear that with the classication of the CNRI and the PMOI as terrorist organizations that administrative reasons are overcoming Rule of law, the rights of the defense, of the presumption of innocence, the principle of argument on the part of all parties. These three principles are the spine of any fair trial. And each of us must know that this iniquitous, scandalous classication is a magical, almost theological reference of sorts for the investigating judges, Messrs. Bruguire and his henchmen, to continue with inexhaustible perseverance to attempt to criminalize, against law and against fact, the leaders of the CNRI which we have the honor of representing. Why did I say that this war is one of a universal nature? Because today, what is at stake? It is the determination of the point to which the ght against international
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terrorism, however lawful, will eat away at the fundamental principles of international law and human rights. Here are a few examples: Each of us praises the progress achieved in twenty years in building a universal set of laws which protects individuals in the face of the Rule of law. And today, this universal trend is taking fundamentally different directions. It is becoming more accentuated for minor military and civilian leaders of all sorts, the international criminal court will undoubtedly try its hand on a few African leaders. It is reduced and attacked from all directions, when it comes to prosecuting the great criminals, when it is not dealing merely with the mullahs in Teheran, but with the various civilian or military commanders who orchestrate repressive policies here and there. And this universal trend is developing in the ght against terrorism, with a leveling off of international law from the bottom upwards. There is an antagonism, therefore, between this universal trend in security measures, and at the same time this constant regression of the mechanisms for protecting international law and obviously in the rst instance, the assertion of the right of a people, a society, to resist oppression and dictatorship. It is my conviction that law is not the only ally of the leaders of the CNRI and the movements it represents, but that time also, far and beyond law, will be the ally of the battles which it is our honor to wage together. Thank you.
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Solidarity with the PMOI

Mishaan Al-Jabouri Iraqi Parliamentarian Ladies, Gentlemen We have come from Iraq to join you today and to declare our support for the Peoples Mojahedin organization of Iran. We view this organization as a great defender of freedom. Like us, the members of this movement are ghting against dictatorship to promote a democratic society. Based on the information we personally have gathered, we can assert with certainty that there is no evidence of this organizations participation in the terrorist activities or its interference in the domestic affairs of our country. Even if the allies of the Iranian regime have attempted to prove the contrary. In all the Iraqi government les we have had occasion to examine, no documents exist which might undermine the respect we have for this movement or which tends to reveal any illegal activity on the part of the PMOI on Iraqi soil. Our endeavors, aimed at insisting on the PMOIs entitlement to be present on Iraqi territory are due to the fact that Iraq constitutes a basis for this movement, before the return thereof to a free democratic Iran. Because in Iraq, we consider that there is a dialectic relationship between our companys stability and the establishment of democracy in Iran. Thus, we have seen that after the collapse of Saddam Husseins regime, the Iranian Security Services took advantage of the situation to take over certain Iraqi towns and to commit odious crimes. It is not exaggerated to say that by taking such a position, we are jeopardizing our very lives. But despite the risks and the terrorist activities of the Iranian intelligence services, we declare our support to the Peoples Mojahedin. I can assure you that there is an increasing tendency among freedom-loving Iraqis to support this viewpoint. Several of my colleagues in the Iraqi parliament would have liked to have been here today, but visa problems prevented them from doing so. In order to establish a democratic society in Iraq, today we are in need of the support of all freedom-loving people. This democracy will not be born as long as external interferences are pursued and above all, those of the Iranian regime. It is also necessary for the multi-national forces under the command of the United Nations to replace the occupation forces. Because, due to the dismantling of our army and security services, our country cannot maintain order and security and prevent civil war without the help of the United Nations. Thank you for your attention. Please excuse me for having broached the issue of 130
my country in this conference which has convened only around legal aspects and in order to prove that the PMOI is not a terrorist organization, but a movement ghting for freedom in Iran.
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We want PMOI recognised as a democratic organisation

John Cherry Member of Senate - Australis
During last year in conjunction with the move in France, the Australian security forces raided the homes of many Iranian activists in my country, trying to nd the proof that those laws have actually been breached, a dreadful, dreadful breach of what has been a long standing view in Australia of supporting democratic freedoms. For that point of view in my country, it is important that this ght, which has been fought out in the European Union, to overturn this proscription succeeds. We in our country have accepted many Iranian refugees into our country from the tyranny of the Iranian regime and it is important in our view that the recognition in our country has put on the fact that we accepted these refugees because of that tyranny, which means that that tyranny needs to be fought., and needs to be fought by those committed to democratic reform and the development of a democratic secular state. From that point of view 28 members of my parliament last year supported a petition calling for the recognition of the PMOI as a democratic organization and also calling for the protection of the inmates of the Camp Ashraf. I was pleased that, that petition attracted the support of parliamentarians from the government, the opposition labour party, the greens party and my own democratic party. We will continue to push this issue in our parliament with the support of the Iranian refugee association in Australia because it is important that democracy through out the world, even on the other side of the world is supported and liberty is encouraged. Thank you and good lick in your struggle.
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Women suer most from the injustice of terror tag

Claire Miskin Barrister, Joint chair of the Womens Interest Group of the International Bar Association Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, In England we are now seeing something I believed I would never have seen in my life time. That is to say, people are being searched, their bank accounts being examined, people do not have to give reasons of being suspected of being terrorists, they are locked up without trial in England. They are not allowed to have access to lawyers. Now this is what happens, when you proscribe a terrorist organization. This may be obvious to you, but just how you would feel. I would like to say in relation to this Iranian organization that all those difculties bear particularly hard on women and girls. I was this afternoon told of a girl aged 13 who was pregnant as a result of a incestuous relation ship and it was ordered she would be stoned to death, bearing in mind that the father, received no punishment at all. In the end I would leave you with a word from one of our greatest and oldest poets, John Donne No man is an Island secure of it self. Never ask for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.
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Democracy is a peoples conquest

Mario Lana President of the Union of Italian Jurists for the Protection of Human Rights Good evening. I am very happy to have come here; I couldnt miss it for that matter, because the association I preside over is the Union, not only of attorneys, but of Italian jurists for the protection of human rights. It is an old association which was created in Italy forty years ago by judges, magistrates, attorneys and university professors, for the protection of human rights, not only in Italy. Its a long story which some of you know. I said that I had to come, even if it represented a certain sacrice, because we accepted to sponsor this initiative which is very important, because it warranted our total solidarity. The solidarity which all those who are struggling for freedom deserve. I am convinced that we are obliged to respect and to give our gratitude to those who are ghting for freedom at the expense of great sacrice. They deserve everyones respect for their battle, for elevating democracy, for overthrowing such a ferocious regime which does not respect freedom, without asking for the support of foreign armies, and that I very much want to emphasize. Democracy cannot be exported with forces, with war, preventive or not. Democracy is the conquest of a people ghting, with the sacrices this implies, and with a will to succeed, by imparting and cherishing the torch of the hope of the Iranian people, as our friends the Peoples Mojahedin have show us. I said that I had observed this mornings work with great attention, with colleagues and university professors. As far as I am concerned, I am represented by a Milan colleague, Professor Bruno Nascimbene, with whom I collaborate in Italy; He has often been a contributing writer to the review of human rights, of which I am the head. This conference must turn our hopes toward the future. What the former President of the Council Mr. Ghozali said this morning was very true. A very hard matrix of international terrorism can be found in State terrorism, which can be seen today in the fundamentalist dictatorship in Teheran. We must be convinced that the battle waged by the friends, comrades of the Peoples Mojahedin is a everyones battle, which we must follow and to which we must display total solidarity, in practice and not merely with words. Thank you.
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You shall not tolerate so very well the injustice that is not hiing yourself
Olav Jirden MP, Christian Democratic Party of Norway Mr. Chairman and dear friends of democratic Iran, I claim that the Peoples Mojahedin Organization of Iran, should be removed from the terrorist list of European Union. And so do the Majority of the Norwegian Parliament. The PMOI is a liberation Organization, and an important part of Iranian resistance movement. PMOI support the efforts to develop a real and a sustainable democracy in Iran. This includes respect for human rights, as an absolute fundament, freedom to express opinions, free press, equal rights for men and women, everyone to be equal before the law or as French used to say a couple hundred years ago, Liberte, Fraternite et egalite. I also regret that the UK, Germany and France have a close relationship with the present regime in Iran. I hope that they will make change in their position and support necessary changes in Iran and support the efforts of the resistance movement to develop a better Iran based on democracy. Iranian people deserve freedom. The coming generation of Iran deserve their beautiful country to develop a real democracy as a frame for their lives as safe and being an inspiration to build a nation which they can be proud of. I wish you every luck to reach these achievements and I think you will succeed. And I will conclude with a poem of my fellow Norwegian, Evalan, he says, You shall not tolerate so very well the injustice that is not hitting yourself. Thank you and good luck
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The PMOI cannot be qualied as a terrorist organization

Dr. Rolf Gossner President of the League of Human Rights in Germany The German League of Human Rights considers the list of terrorist organizations to be a biased one, and requests that it be revised immediately. In fact, the registration of the PMOI on this list violates the rights of foreigners and refugees in Germany. The League of Human Rights casts a critical eye on several cases in which refugees status has been revoked due to this list. Thus, several people who had be compelled to ee their countries several years ago due to repression and danger to their lives, have be deprived of their refugee status and are threatened with deportation. This registration transgresses the protection afforded refugees in the face of the threat of deportation to countries in which their lives would be in danger. Based on the legal opinion of Dr. Reinhard Marx, a renowned specialist of the laws governing foreigners, the League of Human Rights is requesting that the Foreign Ofce in Germany take into consideration the following factors when it makes its decisions: membership in the PMOI can in no manner warrant an application for, or the cancellation of, refugees status or the deportation of persons. The PMOI cannot be classied among international terrorist organizations. The PMOI is based in Iraq and combats essentially the Iranian regime, and currently enjoys the protection of the Geneva Convention. Cancellation of the refugee status of these persons can be authorized only if the real reasons for which such status was granted to them no longer exist. The International League of Human Rights published a press release in which it requests that the German government act on the basis of the following notions: the PMOI must not be utilized by the west as a diplomatic tool or as a negotiating card in its relations with the Iranian regime, a regime which continues to violate human rights. the EUs list of terrorist organizations is a political-executive list and not a legal-legislative list and consequently, it must be revised very rapidly because it generates serious consequences which can lead to the violation of human rights. A person cannot be detained with a view to his possible deportation, without conducting the procedure to its conclusion and without a court decision being pronounced to this effect. No one must be deported to a country in which his life would be in jeopardy because this would constitute a violation of the constitution, of the European Convention of Human Rights and the Geneva Convention on refugees. 136
We Iraqis want Mojahedin today in Baghdad, tomorrow in Tehran

Ismail Ibrahim Hamoudi al-Shaikhli Sa.lam alaeekum Im a sea captain from Iraq .I represent the Iraqi Gathering. I did not attend this conference to present you juridical articles, international agreements, UN resolutions, gures and gures and gures, a job I left already to some of the most distinguished experts in these elds. Rather, I came here to show you my unique scars. On this poor body I hold the scars of three dictatorships, which have a lot and a lot of practices and even ideas in common: dictatorship of nation, dictatorship of religion and dictatorship of class. In Iraq, about 20 years ago, although I am an Arab, I was sentenced to death by the rst dictatorship. In Iran, although Im a Muslim I spent three years in jails by the second dictatorship and in Afghanistan although Im of proletarian origin ,I spent another three years in jails by the third dictatorship. Their nation is a lie, their class is a big lie and their religion is the biggest lie. Because of all these lies I decided to be a democrat, I decided to be here with you to support the Mudjahdeen Khalq. Fathamless belief in the fact, that no peace, no progress and no real democracy in Iraq without a twin and real democracy in Iran encouraging me to ask you, all, in Europe, in the USA, in every free nation all over the world to: 1-lift Mudjahdeen Khalq from the vicious list of terrorism; no greedy economic calculations should be allowed to defeat our high values; 2-garantee the legitimate and vital existence of this organisation not only in Iraq but all over the world; for the benets of all, we Iraqis want you Mudjahdeen Khalq today in Baghdad and tomorrow in Tehran; 3-support this organization by all means available, as the only enlighted, democratic and civilised alternative to the backward, savage and primitive dictatorship of mullahs. If we want our dream in a stabilized, democratic and progressive middle east to be a true, lets be honest and brave to state the fact, that our region, on the hands of these mullahs, had lost already millions of its best people and it will lose, and you will lose more millions if we allow these mullahs to continue in power, or, more worse, attain atomic bomb. The unparallel technological revolution made our planet a small village not only in National
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the sense of communication and exchange of information, but also made each one of us a reachable target to terrorism. Couldnt the mad religious project, sponsored originally by the mullahs, reach the twin towers in New York? The railway stations in Spain? The tourist facilities in balie? Dont we see them propagate the culture of chopping heads on the most advanced achievements of civilization, the internet and the web sites? Ladies and gentlemen ,we are all sailing in one boat ,so we must ,all, take care of it in order to reach the coast safely. And believe me, if we sink, in the Middle East, we will not sink alone. The French have, as usual, a nice proverb with witch I will nish my word: une hirondelle ne fait pas le printemps lets all be swallows to make a spring. Thank you
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A scandal and a political absurdity

Jean Paul Benoit Attorney, former member of the European Parliament International Secretary of the Mouvement des Radicaux de Gauche Ladies, Gentlemen, I am an attorney, therefore I am very pleased to take part in this meeting because I belong to a trend in political thinking which has based its history and its action on humanism, freedom and secularity. The battle you are waging is one which all democratic parties in our country and in Europe must wage at your side. It is therefore only naturally that I have come here, and I feel at home among you. I am intervening in several capacities. As a member of the European Parliament, I lived through the European procedures, and often their opaqueness, their cumbersomeness, and sometimes their injustices. There is no doubt that a registration following a secret vote and negotiations on the basis of a number of economic and commercial interests, which made-up the negotiation of the registration of the Peoples Mojahedin on the list of terrorist organizations constitute a political scandal, a legal aberration and moreover a political error. It is a scandal, because it has resulted in this type of perversion, this extraordinary paradox in which a democratic party, a democratic body, yours, is ghting a dictatorship, which is qualied as terrorist, while the State against which it is rising up, nances, inspires and activates international terrorism. Its a legal aberration, and the eminent jurists and professors who have spoken this morning have demonstrated this, so I shall not dwell on this aspect. Moreover, and slightly more prosaically, it is a political error on the part of the States which lend themselves to this game and this negotiation; No negotiation with a terrorist State or an authoritarian State such as the mullah state can procure any political advantage whatsoever for those who are negotiating and it is therefore a form of political blindness. Lastly, as an attorney, I would like to say, as our colleagues have this morning, that the ght for democracy, for individual liberties, is an unrelenting ght which we must wage, because democracy and individual liberties are fragile, and we can see even in our country that it is legitimate to ght in the name of the war against international terrorism. We conne our conduct in an aura of security which often undermines the elementary rights of defense and the citizen and one of our colleagues this morning spoke of the presumption of innocence which must always be present in our minds. 139
This therefore is the message I wanted to communicate very rapidly, to tell you that it is the duty of any democratic force because your struggle is a universal one to be at your side and I am happy, in my modest way, to be among you today.
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For the sole purpose of pleasing the Iranian Regime

Franoise Serres Attorney I wonder on behalf of whom we are speaking this morning: we speak of terrorism and we refer to statements Mr. Solana when speaking of the Hamas indicated that the Hamas could be deleted from this list if it ceased its attacks in Israel. The question I am asking myself, is has it ever been said, or has anyone invoked the fact that recently, a member of the Mojahedin or not, packed in plastic bombs blew himself up in a discotheque, in a school or in a theater? Therefore, when one is in the eld, one truly is totally disconnected from todays discussion a list which apparently has no legal basis, no factual basis at any rate and the deeds which we are confronting. I would like to say on three levels: rst of all on the historical level. First of all because one must remember that the DST in France indicates in all its reports that this alleged terrorist group ceased all military activity in July 2001, i.e. several months before France accepted, as a member of the European Union, the idea that this group might be a terrorist group. In April 2003, in an agreement signed with the American authorities this group was disarmed. There was a voluntary handing over, a negotiation. Those who in the end allegedly conduct the military operations of this terrorist group have now been disarmed. It was therefore one month later, for a group which had ceased all activity, all claim of military activity, which has been deprived of all its weapons, that this parody of justice was initiated in June 2003, and this was the position accepted by Judge Bruguire and the anti-terrorist section in the Paris ofce of Public Prosecution. Historical parodies also since a certain number of people are threatened with deportation since that period. This means that people who are considered as organizing an immediate disturbance of public order, prepare attacks although we know very well that it isnt true and that the French administrative courts approached sanctioned and suspended all of these procedures. The disconnection is geographical also, because very frankly I wonder what business France and the French court system have getting involved in this. Not only because there is no link between what happened and what is happening in France the former director of the DST mentioned this morning and what in the end is happening in Iran, but above all because today, and this is linked to a certain number of events which occurred recently and by a complaint led by the families of alleged Iranian victims, the French court system becomes in the end the referee of a conict between a Nation 141
which France qualies as terrorist with others, and a group which France also qualies as terrorist. Its up to a French court to arbitrate this conict in name. To the extent that in order to end up in this situation, international law and international conventions are distorted, because the possibility of having this discussion, implies that the Iranian State Iranian families invoking alleged attacks which took place in February 2000 can le complaints in France invoking the Universal Convention on Terrorism. This means that in fact, we know that this convention cannot be set-up and become effective in France until perpetrators have been found on French soil. Therefore here again the position of the Paris Ofce of Public Prosecution completely distorts the spirit of the law, until we see a criminal court in France harbor an IranoIranian conict. In the end, there is a third disconnection, and it is with world politics. After having been to Iraq three times recently, I would nonetheless like to say that French diplomacy appears to me to be in an irreversible comatose state, when we compare what the American position consists in. I would like to read what is at the end of the work which was handed out to you this morning, for the residents of Archraf: The United States have conrmed your status as protected persons protected under the Fourth Geneva Convention and have communicated this determination to the International Red Cross Committee in Geneva. The acknowledgement of this determination will contribute to accelerating the efforts of the Committee and of the United Nations Higher Commission for Refugees for the provisions which concern you as individuals in accordance with applicable international laws. It was written in July 2004 and is signed by the Headquarters of the multinational force in Iraq. But what was not stated this morning is that this declaration was made after three months of inquiries by the agents of the FBI and State Department. Three months of investigations during which 3800 terrorists, on the list we are discussing, were questioned, given that today, if we understand what Judge Bruguire is saying, there are people in France who nance terrorist activities in Iraq, who attack Iranian territory from Iraqi territory. The only thing that Judge Bruguire forgets to specify is that the last time this happened it was in 1998. But nonetheless, there is an FBI investigation; The Americans agree entirely to register this organization on the list of terrorist organizations and yet at the end of this investigation, no persons were prosecuted, the 3800 persons gathered in Achraf, for having attacked American interests, for having attacked international law, for having attacked the Kurds, for having attacked I do not know whom, the Shiites, etc.. Therefore, today, in the end, we have an implicit decision on the part of the American federal agency, which means that the people in Iraq cannot be tried before any court. Let us say that they nonetheless keep them on their list and we nonetheless have 142
a problem in France now, prosecuting people for terrorist nancing while these people have no weapons, have not conducted military activities for aeons and while the Americans tell you that they cannot be tried before any court whatsoever. Whats happening in France? In France, totally surprising things are happening. Just 15 days ago, I had to defend before the judge of detention an Iranian who was a member of the National Resistance Council involved in the case of June 17th. The Public Prosecutor in Paris, you had to hear it to believe it, had just said that this person had to be placed in detention in order to protect French law and order and the interests of the Islamic Republic. People were also talking about the preparation of attacks as if they were considering preparing attacks, while we know that these people have no weapons. Therefore, in fact when you review these three historical, geographic and political stages, there is a link in the thinking on the part of the French courts and French policies which is that of nancing from French territory for the purchase of weapons for the Iraqi territory, to conduct acts on Iranian territory. We know that these are only military operations. I am impatiently waiting for the French criminal court, so that a French judge will state that the 1998 Lumire Eternelle operation was a terrorist operation. You launch 3000 soldiers on Teheran, 1000 of them are killed by the pasdarans and you call that a terrorist operation. Very well, lets wait; it will be extremely interesting from a legal standpoint. Another problem which appears very important to me and which truly shows that French diplomacy and policy are in very poor shape, is the current position of the Paris Ofce of Public Prosecution. Complaints are led in the case of June 17th, which has no goal other than to permit the Iranian authorities to have access to all the documents seized in Auvers-sur-Oise. It is a case in which the conspiracy is the prosecuting body. We know this very well; the jurists will acknowledge this as I do, that no complaints can be led. Therefore I speak to the Iranian victims of these alleged attacks in a case of conspiracy, for reasons which the Court of Cassation recalled on numerous occasions. The position of the Paris Ofce of Public Prosecution is identical to that of the judges. But the judges tell us that they are very sorry, but we arent the ones to decide. Since May, we have been awaiting the decision which has been dispatched to higher realms of politics, in negotiations on the level of the staff of the Minister of Justice and most likely even higher. This, therefore, is the status of this le. In the end, when you have the feeling of ascertaining such a degree of disconnection between not only the law, but its more serious given that these are facts, factual elements which are submitted, indeed we have more than a list, a designation. This designation has no purpose other than to be an instrument for the benet of the Islamic Republic. 143
We spoke this morning of terrorism; I must add that these are disarmed terrorists. We have spoken of protected terrorists, we expressed surprise. Today, we must not speak only of terrorists who are victims. In normal traditional language, this is called a freedom-ghter. This is my testimony today. I am alarmed to ascertain the conduct of this investigation in France on the judiciary level, and alarmed to ascertain that on the level of the United States, with whats happening in Iraq, they are beginning to realize how this case is extremely negotiable. In some ways, it is a test of the young Iraqi democracy. Today, the presence of the Mojahedin, 80 kilometers from the Iranian borders constitutes a crucial wager. I would like to say again that their presence is essential, and it is not because we won this combat in 2004 that it has been won today. Perhaps there will be elections in 2005; we dont know what will happen later. I ask that you think very hard about the fate of these ghters who are present and who are an advanced guard of sorts on Iran and also on Iraq. Because we do not know what is to become of this region.
144
A political decision, void of any legal grounds

Hassib Aref President of the Center for a new dialogue in Iraq Dear friends and representatives of the Iranian people Ladies and Gentlemen, We know that the inclusion of the Peoples Mojahedin of Iran on the list of terrorist organizations is the result of shameful bargaining between the West and the Iranian regime which conducted a campaign of libel against this movement. This decision is rst and foremost a political one, void of any legal grounds and far from reality. For 40 years, the PMOI has been ghting for freedom, independence and justice. Its action is above all political and is limited to the territorial framework of Iran. This movements struggle in collaboration with the Peoples forces in Iran permitted the overthrowing of the Shahs dictatorship. However, the revolution to overthrow the monarchy was usurped and the PMOI was repressed. The Mojahedin then resumed the ght, as though it were their fate to be in the opposition. If we examine the history of the PMOI and its political, cultural and social tendencies, we note that we are in the presence of a movement which is respectful of democracy, pluralism the freedom of expression and the separation of the church and state. Today we see that the political program we have for a free democratic Iraq reveals considerable similitudes with the program of the National Council of Resistance of Iran and the PMOI. This is why we consider ourselves to be on their side, in a united front against fundamentalism, violence and terrorism. We are all opposed to the possibility that Islam might be used to promote force, obscurantism and terrorism. As Moslems, we have faith in goodness and the grace of God, his holy Book, his messengers and their humanist message. This is why we are reacting, in the name of Islam, against fundamentalism and terrorism. It is from this standpoint that we consider it necessary that the PMOI be stricken, in the name of fundamental rights and international law, from the list of terrorist organizations and that it is replaced by the name of the terrorist regimes, totalitarian regimes based on violence, repression and the exporting of terrorism beyond borders. We have come here today to say to Europe and all the countries of the world that justice and equity must be defended and terrorism and those who sponsor it must be fought. We must also support oppressed peoples throughout the world. Long live freedom and the PMOI, I salute all militants throughout the world who are ghting for justice and peace. It is deep in my heart and souls for me to go back to Ashraf (Mojahedins camp in 145
Iraq) and to be with all the people who are near and dear to us. I know they are seeing this broadcast so I say hello to each and everyone of them who have become close friends of mine in the ght that we lawyers, jurists, parliamentarians, and everyone in this room and outside this room are ghting strongly on their behalf. I want to read to you a letter dated 28th of December 2001. It comes in a form of a report from the Islamic republic of Iran to the United Nation Security Council. It starts its opening line as follows; as a victim of terrorism, the Islamic Republic of Iran regards terrorism as a global menace and then 2 pages later in the same letter states as follows, the MKO terrorist group harbored in Iraq, supported and instigated in Iraq commits repeated acts of terrorism at our borders. It states further, despite repeated demarches, to governments in Europe and North America, where the members of MKO receive supports, collect funds, recruit new members, and broadcast their terrorist activities. The MKO terrorist organization continues to operate there. Is that credible? Do you believe that? Certainly, there is a lot of support in the room here but does anyone of us think we are amongst terrorists? No, obviously not. However, that is the roots of the allegation against the Mojahedin. Steven Perl, who represents Americans that are subject of terrorist attacks overseas no matter where that happens. Said in his view and the research he has done, 99% of the all the terrorist attacks happening in the world today are sponsored by the government of Iran. I have no doubt about that. I want to say as a nal comment that the movement of resistance means, resist. And that is what we are doing here today and for a long time and more time yet to come. Is to resist the political temptation of a witch hunt and all these deals that we heard about, brokered by European countries three of them in particular that have special economic relationships and motives that do deals with the mullahs in Iran. We believe that human right can be brokered and traded. We are going to stand up and protect them. So I want to thank Mr. President for allowing me the opportunity to share my comment with each of you here today.
146
Resist EUs deal with Mullahs

Warren Creates Attorney-at-Law, Canada
It is deep in my heart and souls for me to go back to Ashraf (Mojahedins camp in Iraq) and to be with all the people who are near and dear to us. I know they are seeing this broadcast so I say hello to each and everyone of them who have become close friends of mine in the ght that we lawyers, jurists, parliamentarians, and everyone in this room and outside this room are ghting strongly on their behalf. I want to read to you a letter dated 28th of December 2001. It comes in a form of a report from the Islamic republic of Iran to the United Nation Security Council. It starts its opening line as follows; as a victim of terrorism, the Islamic Republic of Iran regards terrorism as a global menace and then 2 pages later in the same letter states as follows, the MKO terrorist group harbored in Iraq, supported and instigated in Iraq commits repeated acts of terrorism at our borders. It states further, despite repeated demarches, to governments in Europe and North America, where the members of MKO receive supports, collect funds, recruit new members, and broadcast their terrorist activities. The MKO terrorist organization continues to operate there. Is that credible? Do you believe that? Certainly, there is a lot of support in the room here but does anyone of us think we are amongst terrorists? No, obviously not. However, that is the roots of the allegation against the Mojahedin. Steven Perl, who represents Americans that are subject of terrorist attacks overseas no matter where that happens. said in his view and the research he has done, 99% of the all the terrorist attacks happening in the world today are sponsored by the government of Iran. I have no doubt about that. I want to say as a nal comment that the movement of resistance means, resist. and that is what we are doing here today and for a long time and more time yet to come. Is to resist the political temptation of a witch hunt and all these deals that we heard about, brokered by European countries three of them in particular that have special economic relationships and motives that do deals with the mullahs in Iran. We believe that human right can be brokered and traded. We are going to stand up and protect them. So I want to thank Mr. president for allowing me the opportunity to share my comment with each of you here today.
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A Legitimate bale with legitimate means, for legitimate goals

Fabio Marcelli Chairman of the Association of Democratic Lawyers in Italy
I would rst of all like to thank the organizers of this important conference, which we, as Italian democratic jurists, decided to sponsor. It was very interesting from the political and scientic standpoints. I say this as a person who devotes himself to the scientic study of international law and human rights. Its important because we must express our support of the Mojahedin who constitute a legitimate organization, who wage a legitimate battle with legitimate means for legitimate goals. Thank you on a more general level, because this conference was critical. It delved into the very concept of the black list of terrorism. It is a concept which is foreign to a liberal legal culture, in European terms. It is inefcient, because today terrorism represents an enemy for peace and democracy. Its not with this list that we can ght terrorism effectively. The second thing is good news: the Italian judiciary is an independent judiciary despite attempts to curb its independence. It decided last October to acquit the Peoples Mojahedin Organization when accused of terrorism, following an investigation which had been opened on the basis of the European terrorism list. The conrmation once again that there is no basis for labeling such an organization as a terrorist organization, and that an entirely other road must be taken to combat terrorism effectively, for peace and for human rights.
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We are going to stand up and protect Mojahedin

Malcolm Fowler Former Chairman of Birmingham Bar Association Member of International Human Rights Committee of the Law Society Dear president, dear colleagues, Ma hame Irani hastim, we are all Iranians. I am lled with emotion, after all I have heard today. I shall take back with me this message that this movement is strong and determined. And that it will not give in. I am very proud to be member of the law society international human rights committee which works hard and tirelessly and bravely where everything counters injustice and oppression across the globe. What better and what worst example can there be than the injustice and oppression and brutality weeded out by this corrupt regime in Iran. What better example. I am lled with disgust, by my own governments attempts to rapprochement, constructive engagement there is a shorter word for it, it is not a euphemism, and the word is appeasement. I am lled with disgust, and I lose no opportunity to tell MPs I know of my disgust. But, on a much more positive note I tell you this, I am ercely proud of what individual MPs from my country are doing, ercely proud. They stand to be condemned and criticized, sidelined rather have a career prospect. But that does not affect them at all. They serve the interest of their community and their constituents tirelessly, bravely; I name some of them and should probably forget some. Off course, you have Lord Corbett. For whom I, we all have such a high regard in the parliament, you have Win Grifths, who has actually visited his constituents prisoners in Iran. You have Dr. Rudy Vis tireless on behalf his constituents in Iran. We had Roy beggs today. I honor them all. They show us the way forward. And I am ercely proud also of this nal fact with which I leave you. We as lawyers stand in the way of excesses and impatience intolerance in part of all our governments. This is not about Iran alone, what effects Iran today, next week, next month, and next year. It affects Europe later on and the whole world in due course. The stakes has never been higher. The determination I sense in this room sends me home with a warm sense a conviction that we shall overcome. We can and we must. Wont we? Thank you.
149
Totally unacceptable
Pierre Bercis President of Les Nouveaux Droits de lHomme
Thank you Mr. President, Please excuse my being late for this symposium. today have been communicated to me. I will say that after having shared the battle of the Peoples Mojahedin for 25 years, I am very sensitive to the fact that we realize that their ranks and the quality of their ght are strengthening daily. And the battle of jurists is not a lesser one; one of the characteristics of the organization which I preside over is to combine law and politics. And nothing worthwhile can be done without law that is why todays symposium is of great importance. I know that our friends the Peoples Mojahedin, who have great know-how, will be able to spread the conclusions of this symposium far and wide. Regarding what has been spoken of today, I would like to share my emotion with respect to the bargaining which goes on more or less secretly, in which the Peoples Mojahedin are maintained on the list of terrorist organizations, in exchange for nancial and economic barter. This is totally unacceptable, and must be denounced loud and clear, and reach head-on the governments capable of doing this. I was in the provinces and essential points of the work which has taken place here
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Conclusions
Bertrand Favreau, President of the Bar Association
Since this morning, we have heard a certain number of prestigious competent speakers. You have had an opportunity to measure the substance of the information provided to you. You have also seen that, far and beyond a debate which may appear personal or particular to you, all the contributors wanted to situate the problem in its true dimension: time and space. All of us spoke of what is happening today, and may happen tomorrow. Certain contributors, including the French and British, had messages of appeasement, and Munich demonstrated that the same errors always produce the same tragic situations. We were also able to consider the fact that the problems of a given region are not limited to this area alone and we saw how in Canada or in Australia one could be indignant and moved by an unjust situation. In sort, and this I say on behalf of Jean-Pierre Spitzer who was with us this morning as moderator and myself, it is patent, and everyone has understood this, because a ten-year child would understand, that the European Union has made a mistake. An error was committed. It is serious and we must not hide our faces. Everything must be done to obtain effective, appropriate and proportionate redress. All of us here are undoubtedly convinced, some when they came this morning, others when they leave later. Each of us will return to his respective region or country which is sometimes very far-off. I am convinced that what has been said today will not remain unspoken. I sensed it in the emotional vibration which permeated the speeches which have been presented since this morning. These were not speeches of circumstance, not worldly discourse, terms of courtesy, they truly came from the core, vehicled by the indignation which crushes our hearts and hopes. Beginning today, we must obviously be concrete and take action in order to obtain redress. Several minutes ago the text of a motion was distributed to you, summarizing what has been said and felt since this morning. given the quality of this assembly, which is admirable and which I congratulate because its attention has never weaken since this morning, which was determinant in the success of this event, we ask of course that you sign this Declaration of Paris and see to it that others sign it. It has no goal other than to ask that the law be applied in a country or in a European Union which has no basis, as you were reminded on several occasions, other than the supremacy of law. 151
And we must again commend the struggle of the Mojahedin of the Iranian People who, crushed in their esh, in their freedom and whose dear ones have been massacred, have only one voice today, one will, that of ghting for law and through law. We have a debt, we have taken on a huge debt and we must do everything, each wherever he can, to the extent of our means, to achieve redress and the rst step is the signing of the Declaration of Paris.
152
There should be no reward for the mullahs

Lord Corbett of Castle Vale Chairman of the Parliamentary British Committee for Iran Freedom
Who deserves to be condemned as terrorists; those who use terror against the people from whom they had stolen freedom or an opposition who want a regime which respects freedom and human rights? The Iranian theocracy persuaded the United Kingdom, other European states and the United States to falsely label the Peoples Mojahedin Organization of Iran as terrorist in a dirty deal over the Mullahs secret nuclear weapons program. Please let me tell you that the majority of members of the United Kingdom Parliament and more than 100 members of the House of Lords rejected the governments terror tag on the Iranian Resistance and supported the PMOIs efforts to help the Iranian people achieve freedom and democracy. There should be no reward for the mullahs. I wish your conference every success and hope it will help those deceived by the mullahs to understand who are the real terrorists. Thank you.
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Summary of legal opinions

The Validity of the PMOIs registration on the anti-terrorist lists of the European Union under European Law and the applicability thereof by the judge
Henri Labayle: Professor of Community law at the University of Pau Bruno Nascimbene: Professor of Community law at the University of Milan Summary The registration of the PMOI on the anti-terrorist lists of the European Union poses serious legal issues from both the technical standpoint and that of the respect of the fundamental rights guaranteed in the Union and in its member States. It was registered on the list on May 2, 2002, six months after a rst anti-terrorist list had been adopted by the European Union, after the events of September 11, 2001. It has been maintained there since, each time the initial list is modied, without any legal justication. 1 The technical viewpoint The process of registering the PMOI on the EU list is considerably complex, to the point that one can wonder whether this complexity is not motivated primarily by the desire to avoid all transparency and to prevent an effective control by the courts. A There are two EU anti-terrorist lists on which the PMOI appears : the rst is established on the basis of a common CFSP and EU position. The second is established by decision of the Council which implements EU regulations. These two lists apply a general common CFSP position which is the result if a resolution by the UN Security Council with a view to ghting terrorism. This is an extremely complicated technical pull-down measure in several levels, which can be described roughly as follows: a United Nations resolution requiring that the decisions of the United Nations Sanctions Committee be applied, a general joint CFSP position translating this resolution in mandatory terms for the Union, a joint CFSP position specic to the war against terrorism applying in the Union, in particular on the level of the judiciary and police force, an EU regulation also doing so in the EC, in particular on the level of the freezing and conscation of assets, an EC decision implementing this regulation 155
national enforcement decisions The evaluation is made of the legality of the PMOI registration process on these
lists in light of these mechanics. B The validity of the list established by the common CFSP position is questionable. Article one of this joint position denes the persons appearing on the list and the criminal acts concerned. An examination of the PMOIs legal situation and legal status under the general provisions of international law and humanitarian international law (see legal opinions expressed elsewhere) appears to correspond neither to the denition given of the persons and entities involved in acts of terrorism nor to the determination of the acts apt to fall within the scope of the denition of acts of terrorism as determined under this common position. Independently of a factual analysis of the PMOIs operational activities which is totally lacking, the interpretation of said common position must also correspond to the law of the Union and in particular the basis text consisting in standard decision 2002/47( on terrorism. This standard-decision sets forth the common law in the domain of the war against terrorism. It excludes from the scope of its application the activities of the armed forces during periods of armed conict, as per the meaning given to these terms under humanitarian international law, which are governed by this law and its adoption was accompanied by a joint statement to the Councils PV indicating that it did not apply to the conduct of those who have acted for the purpose of preserving or restoring these democratic values, as was the case in particular in certain member States during the second world War, could be considered today as falling within the category of terrorist acts. It is therefore difcult to conclude that the PMOIs military activity in its struggle against Iran can validly fall within the scope of the application of anti-terrorist legislation and therefore on the EU list, both in light of international law but also the Unions clearly expressed aims in its incrimination of terrorism. C The validity of the list incriminating the PMOI on the EC level is just as questionable, particularly as it relies on the EC treaty which entails technical and procedural constraints in addition to the previous remarks. The approximate nature of the conditions surrounding the drafting of said list, which are set forth in the Unions texts reveal serious irregularities on the level of both the details and other information to be adopted and that of the motivation of the act at issue, the PMOIs registration on the list is problematic and remains arbitrary in light of the conditions under which it was carried out. Obviously, it is merely the mechanical application of a decision made in a context other than the Union context, with any particular examination of the circumstances on the union level apt to warrant the serious material consequences it can entail from both the police and judiciary standpoints and in light of the laws of property and the laws governing refugees. These elaboration methods deprive the PMOI of the minimum conditions of proper 156
administration necessary for exercising the rights of defense, as the sole justication produced by the Council consists in the execution of an international obligation; The respect of the principles of legality and proportionality should have led the Council to a substantiated examination of the facts and of the law which applies, in accordance with Article one of the common position and numerous Council declarations to this effect, in order to avoid an obvious error of appreciation in the legal qualication of the PMOIs activities. This error appears to accompany a diverting of the list procedure, when the latter is utilized as a means of diplomatic pressure and not as an instrument for combating terrorism. II The standpoint of the guarantee of fundamental rights The European Union guarantees the protection of fundamental rights in the framework of its action. It must also respect the international governing Human Rights and the humanitarian law the analysis of which conrms the applicability of its rules to the PMOI and to its action. The registration of the PMOI on the EUs antiterrorist lists must therefore comply with this obligation. A There is no doubt that, basically, such a registration poses a problem with respect to fundamental rights and in particular of the European Convention of Human Rights. The council expressly concurs moreover given that it attempted to be reassuring on this point throughout the procedure. The conditions of the PMOIs registration appear to contravene standards in this domain, from the standpoint of both the issue of rights of defense and that of the right to a fair trial and to a judge, not to mention the grievances on the merits from the standpoint of the presumption of innocence of the principle of lawfulness. One of the major problems arises from the fact that the essential aspect of the edice relies on a common CFSP position which escapes, pursuant to the principle of granting jurisdiction ratione materiae to the Union, the control of the EC Court for lack of the capacity to act. The EU judge acknowledges this prejudicial situation explicitly in a decision which is being appealed today (TPI, June 7, 2004, Segi): the claimants currently most likely have no effective judicial recourse according to his own terms. This avowed lack of power does not lead the Court however to assert its jurisdiction but it constitutes the grounds for the criticisms expressed, without any possible objection. This therefore is a denial of justice which constitutes an undermining of the judicial protection which is guaranteed litigants in the European Union both under the international laws of Human Rights and by the ECHR or the Unions laws. It is clear for the Union list, which commands the response on the part of the police and the courts. One can also fear that this limitation of judicial control will also apply to the community list, given the extent to which it merely applies the common position which is being challenged. 157
B. This situation therefore leads us to envisage two possibilities, in the event that the Union judge were to persist in his refusal and failed to establish a supplementary control of the common position at the time of the control of the community list. The rst channel is open to the national judge at the time of his examination of a national measure to apply the list. It is up to him to accept or refuse to reject the rule of the supremacy of the Union law pursuant to the fundamental nature of the obligations transgressed, which originate in the constitutional rights of the member States, in international law and the ECHR. This solution is not to be obviated in certain member states. The second channel is the most likely one and consists in seeing the European Court of Human Rights establish its jurisdiction over the list. It did not eliminate the principle thereof in its Segi decision of May 16, 2002 which indicates that the measures of enforcing the various common positions must be the object of such a control. There is therefore cause to think that in the event of the failure of the national and community judicial, the Court of Strasbourg will establish its control and sanction cases of incorrectness. Henri Labayle
Titles and Diplomas Diploma of Extensive study of international and European law, University of Toulouse Diploma of Extensive study of public law, University of Pau Doctor in Higher Education, European Law, University of Toulouse State Doctor in Public Law, University of Toulouse
Professional situation University Professor, graduate in public law

Jean Monnet Professorship in Community Law at the University of Pau Dean of the Faculty of Bayonne Member of the European networks of experts on fundamental rights, on criminal law and immigration into the European Union Recognized expert in issues of Justice and Domestic Affairs in the European Union for the Unions institutions, Expert heard on these issues by the European Convention at the time of the drafting of the draft Constitution for Europe Author of numerous publications on the European judicial space and repressive mutual aid.
Bruno Nascimbene
Born in Italy in 1946, he studied law at the University of Milan (19-9) and University of Political Science (1973) with a maximum grade and the highest cum laude distinction. He worked as an assistant at the Department of International law at the University of Milan, at the Faculty of Law. He was rst professor of international law at the University of Genoa, then professor of EC law, at the Faculty of law of the University of Milan, where he occupies a professorship at the higher school of specialization in the law and economy
158
International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists of the European Community. He directed this School from 2001 to 2003. He is member of the scientic and management commission of international and European law reviews, former president of the association of legal studies on immigration, President of Lombardy Section the Italian Society for the of international organization. He is also an attorney in Milan. He has published numerous essays and volumes on the treatment of foreigners in international, European and Italian law, citizenship, asylum, the protection of human rights, the institutional issues of the European Community and competition law.
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Can the Peoples Mojahedin Organisation of Iranian (PMOI) be regarded as a terrorist organization?
Legal opinion by Eric DAVID At the request of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the undersigned, Professor Eric David, President of the Centre for International Law at lUniversit libre de Bruxelles, has the honour to present his view on the question of knowing whether the Peoples Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) could be judicially qualied as terrorist from the standpoint of international law. The question is to know if the armed actions perpetrated by PMOI against the Iranian regime since the 1980s can be qualied as terrorist and thus justify their inclusion by the European Union in the list of terrorist organizations. This examination will be made in view of the international legal instruments which apply to terrorism. This analysis intends to remain purely legal and will not come to a conclusion about the political legitimacy of the armed actions of the PMOI. Considered separately, and apart from the Iranian context, the armed actions of the PMOI can seemingly fall under certain denitions of terrorism, but placed within the framework of the Iranian situation, they seem to be acts of war and not acts of terrorism stricto sensu.
Armed actions conforming to certain denitions of terrorism

The armed actions of the PMOI presented as terrorist have mainly consisted of actions that led to the wounding or killing of certain specic individuals - military and senior ofcials of the Iranian government - or to the damaging of certain locations (reneries, factories, etc). These actions were principally intended to force the Iranian regime to establish a democratic and secular system, respectful of human rights. Do these acts fall under the jurisdiction of international instruments which prosecute terrorism? One can put aside the various instruments which concern a particular category of acts generally described as terrorist: Hijacking(1), attacks on the safety of civil aviation (2) or navigation(3), attacks against internationally protected persons(4), hostage taking(5), etc.(6) . None of the actions attributed to the PMOI and which the undersigned could be informed of, fall under any of these qualications. The PMOI being presented as terrorist by Iran and the EU without any other precision, one has to know if there is a general denition of terrorism applicable with the armed actions of the PMOI. The armed actions of the PMOI could, on the other 160
hand, correspond to the incidents of terrorism dened by the European Convention on the Suppression of Terrorism of January 27, 1977, and by the framework decision of the European Union (UE 2002/475/JAI) of June 13, 2002 relating to the ght against terrorism(7). In the case of EUs 2002 Framework Decision, the armed actions of the PMOI bear a resemblance to certain actions targeted in the rst article, namely attacks upon a persons life which may cause death, and attacks upon the physical integrity of a person, since these acts were carried out with the aim of unduly compelling a Government or international organization to perform or abstain from persforming any act or seriously destabilizing or destroying the fundamental political, constitutional, economic or social structures of a country. (Article 1, 1, a-b). One wonders how armed actions intended to establish a democratic and secular system, respectful of human rights, could be described as undue.
A. Armed actions which qualify as acts of war

The armed actions of the PMOI should in fact be considered within the framework of a war which has been waged by the Iranian government on its opponents. However, during the 25 years that this conict has been going on, it appears to be a war with sometimes international and sometimes internal character. The armed actions of the PMOI certainly had the appearance of an international conict when raging in 1987 and 1988 during the Iraq -Iran conict. But before 1987, and after the cease-re agreement concluded on August 20, 1988, by Iraq and Iran, the conict between PMOI and the Iranian regime remained purely internal. Thus we must see if these operations can be considered a non international armed conict (n.i.a.c.). PMOI has been campaigning for nearly 25 years against the Iranian regime. Moreover, PMOI is an organized movement with a hierarchy and has a responsible chain of command and a well-known leadership. Contrary to terrorist groups, PMOI is not a clandestine movement, made up of cells vaguely connected to one another, without authority ready to represent the movement at the national or international level. PMOI is a true party to the conict in the full meaning of this expression. It corresponds precisely to the criteria dened recently by the International Committee of the Red Cross distinguishing between a party to the conict and a terrorist group. With regard to its capacity to respect and apply International Humanitarian Law, PMOI is equipped with a code of conduct for the military operations by which it has enforced a self-imposed ban on any action that might jeopardize the lives of civilians. The armed actions of the PMOI thus fall under the denition of n.i.a.c. as in article 3 (common to the four Gevena Conventions of 1949, to which Iran is a state party).
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It should be remembered that for nearly 25 years, the theocratic regime of Iran has arrested tens of thousands of people, on an arbitrary basis, for violation, true or alleged, of religious values. These people are often subjected to torture; they dont face trial and if they do, it is a sham trial not respecting any of the guarantees enshrined by the rule of law; many were condemned to capital punishment for crimes of opinion or of religion, when they were not simply executed without any trial. Such serious and massive violations of the most elementary human rights seem to be a permanent aggression of this regime against its population. Perhaps this violence does not take the form of an open or collective hostility of one army against another army, but by its extent, its recurrence and its gravity, it constitutes a war. When we speak of 120 000 people massacred in 20 years (supra 16), one can no more qualify this situation as simple internal tensions or sporadic and isolated acts of violence, because violence is general and permanent. Armed violence with such a large scale against the population which is not able to defend itself is necessarily constitutive of an armed conict. This qualication is perfectly compatible with the situation envisaged by the common art. 3, but not dened by it. The silence of the text leaves great latitude for interpretation of its eld of application provided that it is a reasonable interpretation and in good faith. In casu, this situation will not be a lack of good faith if one describe the Iranian situation as an n.i.a.c. This situation of war without confrontation is comparable with certain phases of the Second World War. Thus, it was never disputed that the aggression made by Germany against Czechoslovakia, with the annexation of Bohemia-Moravia in 1939, or against Denmark in 1940, generated a war, although in both cases, not a single bullet was shot(8). The case is transposable to Iran: absence of open clashes between the Iranian forces and PMOI cannot mask the existence of a permanent aggression of the Iranian regime against its population in the form of arbitrary arrests, torture, summary judgments and executions which, by their sheer numbers, seem a massive violation of human rights. This massive violation is perfectly comparable to a situation called c.a.n.i. and refered to by common art. 3. In this context, the armed actions of PMOI seem elements of the war and cannot be compared to acts of terrorism within the meaning of the international instruments which target terrorism. On the other hand, the EU framework decision of 2002, regardless of the doubtful character of its application to the armed actions of the PMOI (supra 26), expressly excludes from its eld of application the activities of armed forces in time of war. PMOI being an armed force and the Iranian situation being, as one has just seen it, comparable to a situation of war, the 2002 EU framework decision would not apply to PMOI. 162
The actions targetted in Article 1 (e) of the framework decision must be infringements, meaning acts that violate the common law. However, in a war, acts of violence related to this conict lose their infractional nature, for as much, of course, they respect the applicable law, namely the IHL. Even if armed actions do not respect the IHL, they do not become terrorist act. If the armed actions of the PMOI were perpetrated against objectives that one can qualify as military objectives, they constitute, therefore, neither acts of terrorism nor war crimes. If, on the other hand, they deliberately took for target simple civilians which have nothing to do with the Iranian regime, then, it is a war crime. That does not make it possible, however, to qualify PMOI as terrorist, within the meaning of the relevant instruments, any more than it is possible to qualify the Iranian government as terrorist , even thought the Iranian regime practices a true policy of terror: the situation of armed conict covers the actions of PMOI as much as those of the Iranian authorities. As far as the Iranian regime is concerned, however, one can point to innumerable violations of rights and countless war crimes (because there is an armed conict) and crime against humanity. These include acts of grave violence such as murder, extermination, torture, etc, committed in a multiple way against a civil population, in pursuit of a policy of the State or of an organization (Statute of the CPI, Article 7).
Conclusions
For nearly 25 years, PMOI has been ghting against the Iranian regime. This struggle includes recourse to armed violence. Judicially, this violence does not relate to terrorism, because: - PMOI is a political organization having grassroots presence in countries where it has opened ofces; its leaders are known and do not seek to hide; they are ready to assume responsibility for all actions of PMOI; - the Iranian regime, by the policy of repression and terror in Iran against all those who dispute its rule, has created a situation comparable to an armed conict; - this situation is referred to by art. 3 (common to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 to which Iran is a state party); - while resisting by armed actions this policy of institutionalized violence, PMOI identies itself as a party to the conict; its actions cannot therefore be compared with terrorism; - a fortiori this refers to the NLA, the armed wing of the PMOI, because it is a real army; the instruments relating to terrorism, in particular, the EU framework decision of June 13, 2002 (preamble, 11) and the draft of a general convention of the UN on terrorism (Article 18) exclude from their eld of application the actions of the armed forces; the armed actions of NLA are thus not intended by these instruments.
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Eric DAVID
Eric DAVID is borned in Brussels in 1943, he has made all his university course in the Free Universit of Bruxelles: doctor in law (1966), special degree in international law (1968), degree in political and diplomatic science (1973) degree in right of citizens (1976). He started as researcher in the Center of international law in 1968, he directed the Center between 1996 to 2000 and chairs it since the end of 2002. He directs superior international diploma since 1996. Eric DAVID is also President of the advisory Commission of humanitarian international law of the Belgium Red Cross (French-speaking section) since 1996 Missions abroad for the account of ONG (Amnesty International, International association of the democratic Lawyers, international Commission of Jurists). Juridical consultations for UN., the Council of Europe, foreign States, the Belgian Government, Senate and the Parliament of Belgium (expert of the parliamentary committee of inquiry on Rwanda and the Lumumba case), ICRC, HRW, Belgian members of Parliament, Belgian and foreign lawyers . Clerk and member of international arbitration courts (LAFICO/Burundi, 1990-1991, Mbayi/Centre of industrial development, 1996-1998) Witness-expert for the Canadian immigration ministry in the case of Mugesera in 1997 Advisor for certain States before the International Court of Justice of the Hague (Qatar in the territorial disagreement Qatar/Bahrain, 1988-2001; Solomon islands in the advisory opinion on the legality of the nuclear weapons, 1994-1996; Libya in the application of the convention of Montreal, since 1992; Democratic Republic of Congo in the Guine/Congo case, 1999-2000; Belgium in the case of the arrest warrant of April 11, 2000, Rp. dm. from Congo C/Belgium, 2000-2002). Representing of Belgium before TPIR in the capacity of amicus curiae in various cases. (Bagosora, Ntuyahaga, Semanza, etc) (since 1997). Invited as expert by the Humans Right Commission of the United Nation on the problem of the mercenariat (2002) and by the U.N.E.S.C.O. on the protection of the cultural capital in the event of armed conict (2002).
Footnotes: 1- Convention pour la rpression de la capture illicite daronefs, La Haye, 16 dcembre 1970. 2- Convention pour la rpression dactes illicites diriges contre la scurit de laviation civile, Montral, 23 septembre 1971. 3- Convention pour la rpression dactes illicites contre la scurit de la navigation maritime, Rome, 10 mars 1988. 4- Convention des NU sur la prvention et la rpression des infractions contre les personnes jouissant dune protection internationale, y compris les agents diplomatiques, 14 dcembre 1973 ; Convention des Nations Unies sur la scurit du personnel des Nations Unies et du personnel associ, 9 dc. 1994. 5- Convention internationale des NU contre la prise dotages, 17 dcembre 1979 6- Voy., e.a., Convention des NU sur la protection physique des matires nuclaires, 3 mars 1980 ; Convention des NU pour la rpression des attentats terroristes lexplosif, 12 janvier 1998 ; Convention des NU pour la rpression du nancement du terrorisme, 9 dcembre 1999 7- JO L 164 du 22 juin 2002, p. 3. 8- DAVID, op. cit., 1.51 et les rf
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Terrorist Designation with Regard to European and International Law: The Case of the PMOI
Prof. Bill Bowring, Director of Human Rights and Social Justice Research Institute, London Metropolitan University Prof. Douwe Korff, Professor of International Law, London Metropolitan University
Summary The opinion deals with three questions: (i) what is the signicance in law of the word terrorist, (ii) how is it that an organization may nd itself designated as terrorist, and (iii) what can the organization concerned do about it. 1. The absence of a clear or agreed denition within the international community of terrorism, terrorist, terrorist act or terrorist group, means that there is uncertainty in the application of any law centring on these terms, and a manifest risk of arbitrary, in particular politically motivated abuse of such law. This reection is of key importance to the PMOI, which sees itself as the wholly legitimate opposition to a brutally repressive regime, where the use of violent methods is no more criminal than the use of the same or very similar tactics by the ANC and PAC in South Africa, the PLO in Israel/Palestine, or FRELIMO in East Timor. This makes it essential that there are strong safeguards in place to check, in all senses of the word, the way in which national and international authorities use the power to blacklist organisations. 2. By using the example of PMOI cases heard in US Courts of Appeal against its labelling as a terrorist organisation, it is concluded that the US legislation is a recipe for arbitrary, secretive and unjust executive decision-making, shielded from the scrutiny of the courts, and equally removed from most public debate precisely because of the chilling effect of the use of the term terrorism. 3. In the United Kingdom, the Terrorism Act 2000 is criticised for the denition it uses of terrorism. It fails to dene what precisely it is about terrorism which adds anything to ordinary serious crimes. It is also pointed out that under the Act there are severe penalties for membership of or support for proscribed organisations, although it is notable that no-one has been prosecuted for association with or support for the PMOI. On the contrary, numbers of members of the House of Commons and the House of Lords have demonstratively associated themselves with events protesting about the treatment of the PMOI. 4. In relation to EU blacklisting, three main problems are identied: (i) there is no requirement that the group has recently committed acts of terrorism for example,
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the PMOI have not carried out any military acts since July 2001 and the decision to include the PKK in May 2002 several years after it had renounced violence, (ii) there is no requirement that the terrorist act be directed against a non-military target, as is the case with the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism, and (iii) there is no requirement that the acts be directed against a democratic government. 5. The blacklisting of an organisation and the devastation this wreaks upon it, seriously interferes with the organisations (and its members) right to freedom of association and assembly, and its right to the peaceful enjoyment of its possessions - all of which are protected by the European Convention on Human Rights. In addition, it will make it difcult if not impossible for the organisation to effectively exercise its right to freedom of expression, which is equally protected. 6. Specically, blacklisting an organisation and freezing its assets, without granting the organisation the right to challenge this blacklisting and freezing, in a court fully satisfying the requirements of Art. 6(1) ECHR, in proceedings in which the factual and legal basis for the blacklisting and freezing is properly, and fully, judicially examined, violates the right of access to court as guaranteed by that provision of the Convention. 7. In view of the high legal status of the Convention in the Council of Europe, the European Union, and the Member States of these organisations, it should, in theory, be easy to raise these matters in legal proceedings at national or EU level, and ultimately in the European Court of Justice and/or the European Court of Human Rights. In practice, this is not so easy, mainly because of the enormous complexity of the legal frameworks within which the blacklisting rules have been drawn up. Even so, it is strongly recommended that legal challenges are pursued with vigour, in the European fora (the ECJ Court of First Instance, the full ECJ, and the European Court of Human Rights), but also, rst of all, at national level. It is recommend that the various avenues be examined further, and used.
Prof Bill Bowring
Prof Bowring is a practising English barrister (mainly in the European Court of Human Rights), and Professor of Human Rights and International Law at London Metropolitan University, the largest University in London. He is the director for the Universitys Human Rights and Social Justice Research Institute, which includes the EC-funded European Human Rights Advocacy Centre (EHRAC) working in partnership with the Russian NGO Memorial in taking cases against Russia to the Strasbourg Court. Prof Bowring is adviser to the UK Governments Department for International Development on Access to Justice and Rights Issues in Russia. He is an expert for the EU TACIS project Developing Local Democracy and Self-Government in Russia, working in four Russian regions on the consequences of the new Law On Foundations of Local Self-Government in the Russian Federation and acts as expert for the Council of Europe and other international organisations on issues concerning human rights, minority rights, and rights to education. He has many publications in English and in Russian on problems of law reform and human rights, as well as international law.
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International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists Prof Douwe Korff

Douwe Korff is a Dutch comparative and international lawyer, specialising in human rights and data protection. A graduate of the Free University of Amsterdam (Netherlands) and alumnus of the European University Institute in Florence (Italy), he has worked at the Max Planck Institutes for comparative and international criminal law and for comparative and international public law in Freiburg im Breisgau and Heidelberg (Germany) and at the European Commission of Human Rights in Strasbourg (France). Before his appointment at London Metropolitan University, he taught international law and human rights at the University of Limburg (Netherlands) and the European Convention on Human Rights at the University of Essex (UK). In the late-70s and early 80s, Douwe Korff was Head of Europe Research at Amnesty Internationals International Secretariat. He has since done work for Amnesty International, the International Commission of Jurists, the Netherlands Human Rights Institute, the International Council on Human Rights Policy and other NGOs on international standards relating to freedom of expression, freedom of religion, the criminal justice system, and racism. He is a member of expert committees of Liberty (the leading British civil liberty organisation) and Justice (the UK branch of the International Commission of Jurists). He is included in lists of experts on human rights of the Council of Europe, the European Union and the OSCE and as such regularly undertakes research and training in the eld of human rights and criminal justice and other matters such as freedom of religion. In the last few years, he has carried out research and provided such training for judges, procurators, advocates and human rights activists in Armenia, Estonia, Georgia, Montenegro, Russia, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Douwe Korff has acted as counsel for the applicant in a number of leading cases under the European Convention on Human Rights, including Castells v- Spain (concerning freedom of expression), McCann et al. v- the UK (the Gibraltar Shooting Case) and Kelly et al.- and Shanaghan v- the UK (concerning the procedural aspect of the right to life), and has been closely associated with a number of other cases, against the Netherlands, France, Germany, the UK and Sweden. He is an Associate of London Metropolitan Universitys European Human Rights Advocay Centre (EHRAC) and, through EHRAC, involved in a range of cases relating to alleged human rights violations in the Russian Federation, and in particular in Chenya. For the last fteen years, Douwe Korff has also been a leading data protection expert and consultant. In that capacity, he has advised Amnesty International, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Committee of the red Cross, as well as international trade associations, in particular in the eld of direct marketing (FEDMA, DMA-US) and market research, and individual companies. His corporate clients have included American Express, Cendant Corporation, Dun & Bradstreet, Readers Digest, Cygna and others. He has written extensively on comparative, international and transnational data protection law. In the last ve years, he has carried out four major studies for the European Unions Directorate-General on the Internal Market, relating to the implementation of EC Directives harmonising data protection law in the EU and the EEA. He is a member of the advisory council of the Foundation for Information Policy Research (FIPR), the leading UK think-tank on IT policy.
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Status of the Peoples Mojahedin Organisation of Iran as a resistance movement

Summary of Legal Opinion by The Rt Hon. The Lord Slynn of Hadley Jean-Yves de Cara Professeur agrg des Facults de droit Universit Paris V Ren Descartes The Rt. Hon. Lord Slynn of Hadley and Professor Jean-Yves de Cara have visited Iraq twice in the past year to study in situ the plethora of documents and evidence concerning the legal status of the Peoples Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI). Thousands of members of the PMOI reside at Camp Ashraf, located about 100 km north-east of Baghdad. The following excerpts from the legal opinion by Lord Slynn and Professor de Cara show their view on the subject: Because of some of the past military operations of the Mojahedin, it may be considered that they enjoyed recognition as insurgents. Such recognition is a unilateral act by which a State acknowledged a factual situation and relationship between the State and insurgents ghting against the incumbent government of another State. The Peoples Mojahedin Organisation of Iran took several limited military actions against military installations in Iran from the Iraqi territory prior to the 1988 cease-re between the two countries, then they later restricted their activities a) to self-defence of their camps and people in Iraq that have been targets of military actions by the Iranian government and b) to political propaganda to Iran calling for a democratic regime in that country. For that reason and to that purpose the Iraqi government recognised the PMOI as a resistance movement. It seems that this status was based on a verbal agreement between the Iraqi government and the PMOI who are entitled to enter and reside in Iraq and enjoy their freedom of action and independence. This is supported by a general practice of the Iraqi authorities and by some documents: a statement by the President of Iraq on June 15, 1986: the Iraqi leadership respects the Iranian Resistance and its political and ideological independence and freedom of action of this resistance in its actions and movements to achieve its objectives The relations between Iraq and the Iranian Resistance are based on peace, mutual respect to national sovereignty and respect for each nations ideological and political choice1 PMOI were allocated by the Iraqi government various places to set up their camps and ofces; the Iraqi authorities consider that sites belonging to the PMOI are
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sites that the government of Iraq has allowed this organisation to use without any interference.2 PMOI were allowed initially to keep their weapons and to take actions against the Iranian territory from Iraq. PMOI were allowed to broadcast in Iraq and outside Iraq PMOI were allowed to carry out military and political training in their camps. Those elements make clear that the Mojahedins were regarded as a resistance movement. Several precedents of such recognition may be found in the past. The French resistance movement had also been recognised as such before it was regarded as a government. In a more recent past, other movements of resistance have been recognised as such: FLN of Algeria during the rebellion against France, SWAPO in Namibia and others which might have ed out the territory of the State against which they have been ghting by force or politically.
Lord Slynn of Hadley
The Right Honourable the Lord Slynn of Hadley Honorary Doctors of Laws, Kingston University Lord Slynn of Hadley was a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary from 1992 to 2002 and is a European jurist of great distinction. His career at the Bar was largely spent in the area of Administrative Law. He was Junior Counsel to the Treasury from 1968-1974 and, upon his appointment as a Queens Counsel in 1974, was Leading Counsel to the Treasury. He became Recorder of Hereford in 1971. In 1976 he was appointed a High Court judge in the Queens Bench Division and received a knighthood. From 1978-81 he was president of the Employment Appeal Tribunal. He was appointed an Advocate General of the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg in 1981 and became a Judge of that Court in 1988. Upon his appointment as a Lord of Appeal in 1992 he was created a life peer and a Privy Councillor.
Jean-Yves de Cara
Appointments Professor agrg des Facults de Droit since 1994, Univeristy of Lyon and at the Institut dtudes Politiques dAix-en-Provence (Institute of Political Science) since 1994 Fellow of the University of Cambridge (Centre of European Law Studies) (1996-1997) Visiting professor University of Durham (UK) (1993-1998) Visiting professor University of Georgia (USA) 1996, 1997 Guest professor at the University of Konstanz (Germany) 1997, 1998 Supervisor and professor of the Pallas consortium, University of Nijmegen (The Netherlands) since 1997 Rfrendaire (legal secretary or law clerk) to Sir Gordon Slynn at the ECJ (1989-1992) Avocat au barreau de Lyon (attorney at the bar of Lyon) since 1988 Conseiller du commerce extrieur de la France since 1996 Director of the Institut Jean Monnet since 1996 Director of the Centre for International Law Studes, University of Lyon since 1995 Board member, Durham European Law Institute since 1993
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Board member, European Maritime Law Organisation, London (1991-97) Board member of the European business law review Member of the editors committee of Les Cahiers lyonnais du droit international Member of the council of the Pallas Consortium, Nijmegen Conseiller du Commerce extrieur de la France, appointed in January 1997
Education Licence en droit (degree in law) Faculty of Law, Lyon (1973) Diplme dtudes suprieures (DES) (postgraduate degree) in public law (1974) DES (postgraduate degree) in History of Law and Roman Law (1975) Diploma in English legal terminology Doctorat dEtat in public law (PhD in Public International Law); thesis supervised by Professor Bourdoncle in Lyon and Professor Dietrich Schindler in Zurich and successfully submitted in December 1981 Academy of International Law, The Hague 1985 Agrgation de Droit public 1994
Professional Associations International Law Association (British branch) Socit franaise pour le droit international Socit Chateaubriand Club des conseillers du commerce extrieurs, Paris Club: The Athenaeum, London
Languages English and French
Practice Prole EC competition law (French monopoly; merger in pharmaceuticals; agreements in shipping) Intellectual property rights (computer law) Banking (duty of advice in French law) Designation of origin and trade mark (wine) International investments and subsidies in The Middle East Unfair competition (medical profession)
Footnotes: 1- Baghdad Observer 15-16 June 1986. 2- Ofce of the President, National Monitoring Directorate December 9, 2002; even for the investigation of weapons of mass destruction an agreement with the foreign organisation was needed Ath Thawra Daily December 6, 1998.
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Summary
Legal opinion by Dr. Jrg Arnold, lawyer and private lecturer at the University of Mnster and the Humboldt University in Berlin and Wolfgang Kaleck, lawyer, Berlin, Chairman of the Republican Lawyers Association (RAV), The Peoples Mojahedin of Iran and the terrorist lists? Legal impact of including the Peoples Mojahedin of Iran in the EU terrorist lists? 1. With their smart sanctions against individuals and public bodies within the framework of the ght against international terrorism the UN Security Council, and consequently also the EU, made something possible that should not be allowed in a liberal legal system: interference in individual rights without, at the same time, providing appropriate legal appeal. Neither the Ordinance of 13 June 2002 nor the Resolution of 17 June 2002 envisages any possibility of legal protection against the listing by the Council of the European Union. The affected persons and public bodies were not even informed about the listing or the reasons why they were included in the lists. 2. The inclusion of the Peoples Mojahedin of Iran in the lists has numerous negative impacts on individual persons as well as organisations working on behalf of the Peoples Mojahedin of Iran and the national resistance council. Very few of the people are explicitly affected by the measures for ghting terrorism. Most measures have indirect impacts. Here it can be determined that there is a tendency in both the commercial and nancial service sector and in immigration and aliens authorities to recognise the decision at EU level, and that in many cases reference can be made to this in justifying behaviour. Here it is particularly problematic that individual persons from a practical and legal perspective can hardly be able to take any effective legal action against the blocking of a bank account or a decision regarding naturalisation or asylum that is based on the inclusion of the Peoples Mojahedin of Iran in the EUs terrorist list. 3. Inclusion in the EUs terrorist list without legal protection violates European law, amongst other things the Committee of Ministers Guidelines on human rights and the ght against terrorism, which were adopted during 53rd session of the UN Commission on Human Rights. This rules that a person who is accused of terrorist activities has a right to have the case brought before an independent and unbiased court that is based on the rule of law, and that this case should be subjected to a
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fair trial within an appropriate period of time. (IX.1. of the guidelines) This basic principle is explicitly mentioned under Section XIV. of the guidelines. The EU acts for listing violates the Treaty Establishing the European Community (TEC). Section 253 of the TEC regulates the obligation to provide reasons for legal acts. Furthermore Section 301, 60, 308 of the TEC, as the legal basis for freezing assets of natural persons and groups of persons. Section 301 stipulates that the Community may only act to restrict, respectively completely restrict economic relations with third countries, while embargo measures against individual persons are not mentioned. In other words, the European Community is only empowered to enforce sanctions against countries. 4. The following basic human rights are violated: Violation of the right to legal hearings: Section 6, sub-section 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights; Section 14, sub-section 1 of the International Covenant on Civic and Political Rights (ICCPR) Violation of the right to defence: Section 6, sub-section 3 c of the European Convention on Human Rights; Section 14, sub-section 3 b of the ICCPR - Violation of the right to legal remedy: Section 13 European Convention on Human Rights, Section 2, sub-section 1 Protocol No. 7 on the European Convention on Human Rights; Section 14, sub-section 5 of the ICCPR; Section 47 of the Human Rights Charter Violation of the right to property: Section 1 Additional Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights; Section 1, sub-section 2 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Violation of the principle of proportionality in connection with the guarantee of property (Section 1 of the Additional Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights). 5. Terrorism is a political concept. Terrorism research has up to now brought forward more than 100 denitions of the term terrorism. However, this effort has in no way managed to provide us with a recognised denition or even a binding concept of terrorism. So what is terrorism? One of the main problems is that formal, juristic terror denitions are applied to any facts of a case. In the case of the inclusion of the Peoples Mojahedin of Iran in the list, there was a complete failure to mention the fact that Iran has been one of the most notorious violators of human rights in the world, and that every type of opposition in Iran is eradicated through violent, undemocratic means that violate the rule of law. Consequently, from the very outset there was no debate on whether the policy of the Peoples Mojahedin of Iran namely to engage in an armed struggle within Iran within limits that it denes itself, and outside the immediate battleground to engage in a purely political struggle can be dened as terrorism. 6. Therefore the EU listings, and consequently the measures applied in connection 172
with them, are based on political decisionism without any legal character and fairness. The entire context of the measures hence not only represents a agrant violation of the character of the human rights set out in the European Convention on Human Rights regarding rights to defence, but they must also be rejected on the basis of a legal philosophical examination of their legal character. In democratic systems the underlying principle is that the rule of law must restrict state power and political decisions. However this basic principle distinguishes between law based on the rule of law and law not based on the rule of law. Should the EU fail to correct the situation they have created through their terror lists where law is no longer based on the rule of law and instead continue it and even expand it, there would be a danger of a disastrous development towards law that was merely based on the name and had no proper legal basis, and in reality represented a law based on political enemies. Following the end of the East-West confrontation and the fall of the Iron Curtain, this would be a return to the legal understanding of the old political systems, which we believed had been overcome.
Dr. Jrg Arnold
Dr. Jrg Arnold, born in 1957 in Radebeul near Dresden; studied law at the Humboldt University in Berlin. Worked for several years in the administration of justice as a judge and as a scientist at the Humboldt University; doctorate on youth criminal law in 1986; post doctoral thesis on legal remedies in criminal proceedings in 1989. Since 1991 at the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law, Freiburg; executive lecturer and head of research group; supervision of international research projects on the protection of human rights through criminal law, in particular with regard to state criminality, respectively the criminality of the powerful and organised criminality. Lecturer at the Humboldt University, Berlin and at the universities of Freiburg and Mnster, focusing on criminal law, general and special parts, law of criminal procedure, prison administration law, law relating to economic offences, international criminal law, the history and theory of law.
Wolfgang Kaleck
Wolfgang Kaleck; studied in Bonn, Counsel for the Defence and Human Rights Lawyer in Berlin, Chairman of the Republican Lawyers Association (RAV), Secretary General of the European Democratic Lawyers (EDL), Coalition Against Impunity: Truth and Justice for the German Disappeared in Argentina copublisher of the Grundrechtereport (report on basic rights).
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Summary of the legal opinion by

Dr. Reinhard Marx, professor of asylum law November 2004 The interstate effects of Council Decision 2002/460/EC of 17 June 2002 on the legal status of members of the organisation Mojahedin-e-Khalq with regard to the laws governing asylum, deportation, residence, refugee and national status, is the topic of the 61-page expert opinion by Dr. Reinhard Marx. He summarised this expert opinion as follows: 1. The fact that an individual entitled to political asylum in Germany belongs to the MEK (Mojahedin-e-Khalq) or has any links with the MEK whatsoever, does not justify the application of Section 60, sub-section 8, clause 1 of the AufenthG (German residence law) nor Section 60, sub-section 8, clause 2 of the AufenthG and hence does not justify the cancellation of asylum or refugee status, unless the individual has committed actual terrorist acts. This is quite separate from the fact that the revocation of a decision on asylum status is only permitted if the grounds for recognition of that status no longer exist. 2. For this reason, simply belonging to the MEK or having any links with the MEK does not justify the rejection of a request for asylum. 3. Deportation of members of the MEK in accordance with Section 54 Nr. 5 of the AufenthG simply because of their membership of this organisation is illegal, because in itself this membership does not represent the commission of a terrorist act. As far as the nature and objectives of the organisation is concerned, the MEK cannot be classied as an organisation that supports international terrorism. Further, in view of the classication of the MEK personnel in Ashraf camp, Iraq as protected persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention, the accusations levelled against the organisation of involvement in terrorist activities cannot be maintained from the point of view of international law. 4. Mere membership of the MEK does not justify a restriction of the legal right to residence protection in accordance with Section 25, sub-section 3, clause 2 of the third amendment to the AufenthG. 5. Independent of the individuals prole within this organisation, simply belonging to the organisation Peoples Mojahedin of Iran does not full the requirements of compelling reasons in accordance with Article 28 (1) of the 1951 Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, unless the authorities can prove that the individual has committed acts entitling the state to invoke compelling reasons of national security or public order. Therefore, unless the authorities can prove that
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the individual has committed such acts, they are not allowed to refuse to hand over the passport to an individual entitled to refugee status in accordance with Section 16a, sub-section 1 of the German Basic Law or Section 51, sub-section 1 of the Auslndergesetz (law concerning immigration, residence, deportation, etc.) 1990 (Section 60 sub-section 1 AufenthG). 6. The naturalisation of foreigners in accordance with Sections 10 and 11 StAG (German Citizenship Act) cannot be refused simply on the grounds of membership of the MEK. If the applicant for naturalisation presents a loyalty statement in accordance with Section 10, sub-section 1, no. 1 of the StAG, the mere membership of the MEK does not justify the assumption of doubts concerning the accuracy of this statement.
Dr. Reinhard Marx
Dr. Reinhard Marx (58) studied general theory of law in Hamburg and received his doctorate on asylum law under Prof. Dr. Erhard Denninger (Frankurt) in 1983. Since 1983 he is a lawyer specialised in Asylum Law and Aliens Law. He is a lecturer at the German Lawyers Association (DAV) and the German Lawyers Academy (DAA). Since 1976 he writes scientic contributions and publishes works on Asylum Law and Human Rights. In addition to writing numerous contributions for German and international publications, Dr. Marx has cooperated in producing commentaries on the German law governing asylum application (AsylVfG) and wrote the specialist book Auslnder- und Asylrecht in der anwaltlichen Praxis (Aliens and Asylum Law in Lawyers Practice). He has also taken part in several hearings in the Bundestag (German Parliament) on issues relating to asylum law.
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INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF JURISTS

Paris Wednesday, 10 November 2004
BRIEF INVESTIGATION OF THE PMOI CASE FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF THE SWEDISH LEGAL SYSTEM
I have been asked by the National Council of Resistance of Iran to investigate the legal implications of the EU Council Common Positions and decisions of 27 December 2001 on combating terrorism for the Peoples Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) since the inclusion of this organization on the EU list of terrorist organizations. BACKGROUND 1. The PMOI is a Moslem resistance movement in Iran. According to the organizations program they oppose the theocratic dictatorship of the present regime and are in favor of a democratic and secular system of government for Iran. The PMOI has been one of the main targets of the present regime and claims that the regime has murdered as many as 100.000 of its members and sympathizers either after summary legal proceedings or without legal proceedings. Members and sympathizers have been tortured and held in custody without the benet of any due process of law. The PMOI admits to the use of violence in their political struggle since peaceful political activity is impossible in Iran. The PMOI denies that it has committed crimes against the rules of war or crimes against humanity in this struggle. With the exception of self defense against Iranian attacks against their bases near the Iranian border in Iraq, the PMOI denies that it has ever used violence outside of the territory of Iran. The PMOI claims that it has never targeted any state outside of Iran or the representatives of such a state inside Iran. The PMOI does not consider itself to be a threat to any other state than the regime in Iran. The United States and their allies interned all members of the PMOI residing in Irak after the occupation of that country. After intensive screening by the American FBI and State Department of ca. 3800 PMOI ghters including ngerprints, DNA samples, photos and individual interviews the PMOI were released from internment without a single person being accused of any crime, much less any terrorist act. An intensive search of the internet has only revealed one concrete claim of any PMOI attacks on foreign interests, and these were during the 1970s under the Shah. The PMOI is said to have killed several US military personnel and civilians working on defense projects in Tehran, in connection with attacks on the Shah-regime, and is said 176
to have supported the occupation of the American Embassy in Teheran in 1979. The PMOI believes that their organization should not be considered a terrorist organization by the international community. They have repeatedly sought legal remedies which would enable them to confront and refute the accusations underlying their placement on anti-terrorist blacklists. The EU Common Poisitions and Council Regulation 2580/2001 2. On 27 December 2001, the Council adopted Council Regulation (EC) No 2580/2001 of 27 December 2001 on specic restrictive measures directed against certain persons and entities with a view to combating terrorism and established an initial list in accordance with the procedure laid down in that Regulation (Council Decision 2001/927/EC of 27 December 2001). At the same time it also adopted Common Position 2001/930/CFSP, which accepts United Nations Security Council Resolution 1373(2001), and Common Position 2001/931/CFSP which provides a basis for Community legislation based on Articles 60 (ex Article 73g) and 301 (ex Article 228a) of the EC Treaty. Common Position 2001/930/CFSP is of general nature calling on Member States to criminalise terrorist acts and participation in terrorist groups, to improve cooperation in regard to criminal investigations and, perhaps most signicantly, calling on Member States to restrict asylum for suspected terrorists and to grant their extradition. This Common Position has no direct effect in the Member States in the EU nor does it require the Member States to create specic legislation. Common Position 2001/931/CFSP deals with specic measures to combat terrorism. The main thrust of this Common Position, articles 2 and 3, is the freezing of assets belonging to designated individual terrorists and terrorist groups. It also contains measures dealing with intelligence and criminal cooperation between the Member States in article 4. Article 1 provides for the creation of a list of designated persons and groups in an Annex to the document. There is a review process of this list at least once every six months. The original list contained 25 individuals and 13 organizations. At present the list contains 45 individuals and 46 groups. A number of individuals and groups on the list are marked with an asterix. According to a footnote in the Annex persons and groups marked with an asterix are only to be subject to article 4 of the Common Position. Those marked with an asterix are persons and groups who are citizens of Member States or acting in and in relation to these states. Apparently the Council believes that it can stretch the authority granted by Article 301 of the EC Treaty which deals with sanctions against states outside the European Community to include groups and individuals who are not EU nationals. Regulation 2580/2001 is a direct implementation of the decision to freeze assets contained in Common Position 2001/931/CFSP. In article 2(3) of the regulation the Council is ordered to establish, review and amend the list of persons, groups and 177
entities to which the Regulation applies. The list adopted is the same as the list created in the Annex to 2001/931/CFSP except that persons and groups with an asterix are excluded. This regulation has direct effect in the Member States. The determination of exact sanctions for the infringement of the regulation is left to the Member States. In June 2002 a Council Framework Decision on combating terrorism was adopted. This Framework Decision includes the same denition of terrorism as Common Position 2001/931/CFSP. In addition it calls upon the Member States to carry out legislation dealing with, amongst other things, the criminalization of these acts and the imposition of harder penalties when a terrorist motive is present. Unlike Common Position 2001/931CFSP the Council Framework Decision includes assurances that the intention is to respect fundamental human rights. The denition of terrorism in the EU Common Position on specic measures and in Regulation 2580/2001 is so broad that, according to any normal interpretation of the wording, any politically motivated violence could be included, irregardless of the context of the act. According to this denition all national liberation movements as well as the Resistance Movements against the Nazis in Germany and the occupied territories during the Second World War would have to be characterized as terrorists. Their nancial resources in other countries would have been frozen and their members would have been refused asylum and possibly deported to their countries of origin. The Council, realizing this difculty, issued a statement in connection with the adoption of the Council Framework Decision mentioned earlier. In this statement the Council explicitly declared that what the Council really meant by this denition was something else. This declaration states that the Common Positions on the ght against terrorism covers acts which are considered by all Member States of the European Union as serious infringements of their criminal laws committed by individuals whose objectives constitute a threat to their democratic societies respecting the rule of law and the civilization upon which these societies are founded. (emphasis added) The declaration goes on to explain that It has to be understood in this sense and cannot be construed so as to argue that the conduct of those who have acted in the interest of preserving or restoring these democratic values, as was notably the case in some Member States during the Second World War, could now be considered as terrorist acts. Nor can it be construed so as to incriminate on terrorist grounds persons exercising their fundamental right to manifest their opinions, even if in the course of the exercise of such right they commit offenses. (emphasis added) It is, however, very unclear as to whether a court in the EU will give this declaration any legal weight when interpreting the denitions contained in the Common Position and Regulation 2580/2001. So far the ECJ has refused to give such statements any binding effect. What is even more disturbing is the basis for inclusion on this list of terrorists. According to article 1(4) in 2001/931/CFSP the list in the Annex shall be drawn up on 178
the basis of precise information or material in the relevant le which indicates that a decision has been taken by a competent authority in respect of the persons, groups and entities concerned, irrespective of whether it concerns the instigation of investigations or prosecution for a terrorist act, an attempt to perpetrate, participate in or facilitate such an act based on serious and credible evidence or clues, or condemnation for such deeds. (emphasis added) In other words it is sufcient that a competent authority in a Member State suspects a person or group for some form of connection to terrorist activities in order to be proposed for inclusion in the list. Decisions for inclusion in the list must be unanimous in the Council but this doesnt change the basis for inclusion. Legal Consequences and Possible Remedies 3. Since the PMOI was added to the EU:s list of terrorist groups in May 2002 any assets possessed directly by the organization, or legal persons controlled by the organization, will be frozen. Individuals suspected of being members or sympathizers of the organization will be the object of police and intelligence cooperation between the Member States and risk being included on the list at a later date. Members or sympathizers, who are not citizens of a Member Country, could be refused entry into the Member States and they might not be allowed to apply for asylum, or such applications might be denied. In addition there is a theoretical risk that these persons could be deported or extradited to Iran. Before entering into a concrete discussion as to the legal implications and possible remedies in Sweden it is necessary to point out that little, if anything, is known about the process whereby the PMOI was included on the EUs terrorist list. It is, however, important to point out that this decision was basically a political decision since there is absolutely no public evidence that the PMOI has ever been suspected of carrying out any illegal activities, much less terrorist activities, in Europe (or other countries outside Iran). For this reason, political considerations may well inuence whether or not the risks mentioned above actually become reality in Sweden or any other Member State of the EU. Unlike many other states Sweden does not have any legislation for the proscription of organizations nor is there any concept of a criminal organization. Thus there is no Swedish national antiterrorist blacklist. Of course the Swedish implementation of Regulation 2580/2001 does, in practice, lead to the same effect since an organization can not exist without nancial resources. Also anyone giving nancial aid to a person or organization on the list could be found guilty of a criminal offense according to the Swedish International Sanctions Act (SFS 1996:95). Neither Regulation 2580/2001 nor Common Position 2001/931/CFSP provide for legal remedies or procedures in relation to the freezing of assets on the grounds that an organization or individual has erroneously been included on the lists which ow 179
from these decisions. Iain Cameron has suggested that an annulment action at the level of the European Communitys court system could be made according to Article 230 EC, which empowers the ECJ to review the legality of acts adopted by the Council and other organs. Another possibility would be to lodge a claim of extra-contractual liability on the basis of Article 288 EC. According to this latter article damages may be sought from the Community institutions if there is harm as a result of their unlawful acts. Criminal Prosecution Aside from the freezing of PMOI assets through an administrative procedure , the immediate effect of Regulation 2580/2001 in Sweden will be the implementation of the Swedish International Sanctions Act. In Section 15 of the Act the Government is required to promulgate the EU regulations for which criminal penalties apply. According to Section 8 of the Act, the intentional breach of an ordinance issued under Section 4 of the Act or a breach of economic sanctions decided by the EU carries penalties of nes or imprisonment up to two years, or, if there are aggravating circumstances, to up to four years imprisonment. Breach of an ordinance through gross negligence carries a penalty of a ne or imprisonment up to six months. For minor offences there should be no penalty. According to Section 10 prosecution based on the Act can only be commenced with the permission of the Government or an Authority designated by the Government. This means that individuals who might try to collect money, or, in other ways solicit support or provide support for the PMOI could be prosecuted. There is another Swedish law that could also be used against persons wishing to support the PMOI. This is the Act On the punishment for nancing especially dangerous criminality in some cases (SFS 2002:444). This law has a denition of dangerous criminality which is almost identical to the denition of terrorism found in Common Position 2001/931/CFSP and Regulation 2580/2001. According to Section 3 in the Act, a person who collects, provides or receives money or other assets for the purpose that these be used for, or, with the knowledge that they are intended to be used for, the commission of especially dangerous crimes can be sentenced to up to two years imprisonment. If the crime is serious (aggravated) the penalty is a minimum of six months or up to six years imprisonment. In minor cases there is no penalty. Aside from the more serious penalty provided, the difference between these two laws is that the latter act requires intent and/or knowledge that might be more difcult to prove. A Swedish organization or legal entity involved in supporting the PMOI would not be subject to the freezing of assets mechanism contained in Regulation 2580/2001 since the freezing of assets only targets non EC entities and individuals. Instead banks or other nancial institutions would be obliged to report to the National Polis Authority on any nancial transactions carried out by these entities if they suspect that the transactions lead to the PMOI. Transactions could be blocked and the assets could 180
nally be conscated, but only after a court decision. Prosecution of members or sympathizers of the PMOI on the basis of either of these laws would open the possibility of raising the rights guaranteed by the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Basic Freedoms (ECHR). The most important relevant articles in the ECHR would be Articles 6(1), 6(2), 11, 13 and Article 1 of Protocol 1. Since the ECHR is Swedish law, domestic courts would be forced to rule on these arguments. What position the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) will take on these questions is, however, still an open question. Civil Actions A person or entity which is subject to having its assets frozen could bring an action within the framework of Swedish national law against the party which actually freezes the assets (usually a bank) for breach of contract. Assuming that the defendant argues that it is only carrying out its obligations according to Regulation 2580/2001 the national court would be forced to rule on the issue of the legality of the Regulation. This, in turn, would likely lead to the court requesting a preliminary ruling under Article 234 EC from the ECJ. Asylum, Extradition and Deportation Sweden has had a history of refusing asylum to persons suspected of terrorist acts. According to the Immigration Act (SFS 1989:529) Chapter 3 Section 4 point 1 refugees can be refused residence permits if required by national security. Also according to the Special Control of Foreigners Act (SFS 1991:572) Section 1 points 1 and 2 the Government can deport foreigners due to considerations of national security or if they are suspected of terrorist acts. However both of these laws forbid the execution of a deportation decision if there is a reasonable assumption that the foreigner risks the death penalty or torture in the receiving country. This formulation is somewhat complicated since the Immigration Authority or the Government makes the judgment as to whether or not there is such a risk. This has been circumvented by obtaining guarantees from the country to which the person is to be deported. If a deportation decision cannot be executed the foreigner can be ordered to report to the police at regular intervals. The result of the inclusion of the PMOI on the EU terrorist list could be that there will be a further deterioration of the situation in relation to members or sympathizers of the organization seeking asylum in Sweden or seeking to enter the country. The extremely weak response of the Swedish Government to the plight of the PMOI ghters in Iraq, who were threatened with deportation to Iran, certainly points in this direction. A recent request by the ECtHR asking Sweden to stay the expulsion of a Palestinian as well as criticism of Sweden from the UN Committee Against Torture indicates that Swedens respect for the principle of non refoulement has become eroded. 181
CONCLUSION 4. The European Communitys methods to combat terrorism have, in spite of declarations to the contrary, seriously weakened the long tradition of respect for basic human rights in Europe. The right to a fair trial guaranteed in article 6(1) of the ECHR as well as the right to the presumption of innocence guaranteed by article 6(2) ECHR have been abandoned in the procedure for inclusion on the lists created under 2001/931/CFSP and Regulation 2580/2001. This absence of legal procedures is also contrary to article 13 ECHR which requires states to provide effective legal remedies when the rights guaranteed in the convention have been infringed upon. Respect for the right to life and the prohibition of torture guaranteed in articles 2 and 3 ECHR could be endangered by governmental practice resulting from the implementation of these European Community decisions at the national level. In addition the right of association guaranteed in article 11 ECHR and the right to the peaceful enjoyment of property in Protocol 1 article 1 ECHR are seriously threatened. So far this deterioration of basis human rights has been aimed at non EC entities and persons. If this tendency is not stopped there is a real risk that this deterioration could soon also affect anyone in the European Community. Every effort should therefore be made to challenge these practices legally both at the European Community level, including the ECtHR, and within all the Member States national jurisdictions. It is at present impossible to predict the outcome of these legal challenges. As pointed out earlier the decisions which have lead to this situation are basically political decisions. The legal battles before us must be consciously linked to this political arena. The ght to remove the PMOI from the European Communitys antiterrorist list is therefore an important part of the general defense of the basic human rights which are a decisive element in any democratic society. Kenneth Lewis, advocate, member of the Swedish Bar Association
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Footnotes: 1- Baghdad Observer 15-16 June 1986. 2- Ofce of the President, National Monitoring Directorate December 9, 2002; even for the investigation of weapons of mass destruction an agreement with the foreign organisation was needed Ath Thawra Daily December 6, 1998. 3- I was asked to write this paper in mid October. Given the time frame it could only be brief. 4- Council Regulation (EC) 2580/2001 and 2001/931/CFSP, see also 2002/340/CFSP from 2 May, 2002. 5- My thanks to Ove Bring, Professor of International Law at Stockholm University, for reading this paper and giving valuable suggestions. Thanks also to Advocate Sten De Geer for useful comments. 6- See for instance NASOG.NET 7- See for example CFI Case T-228 Peoples Mojahedin Organization of Iran v Council and Peoples Mojahedin Organization of Iran v United States Department of State, 182 F.3d 17 (D.C. Cir. 1999) one of several suits made in the United States. 8- See articles 16 and 17 in 2001/930/CFSP 9- For a discussion of the legal effect of these Common Positions and Regulation 2580/2001 see Cameron European Union Anti-terrorist Blacklisting Human Rights Law Review, Volume 3, Number 2 2003. 10- See again Cameron ibid. 11- See Council Decision 2001/927/EC. 12- Articles 9, 10 and 11 in Council Regulation (EC) 2580/2001 13- OJ L 164, 22/06/2002, article 1(1) 14- Ibid, point (10) in the preamble and article 1(2) 15- Article 1(4) in Council Regulation (EC) 2580/2001 refers to article 1(3) in 2001/931/CFSP 16- 11532/02 Annex II Statement 109/02 17- See Case 292/89 Antonissen (1999) ECR I-745 18- For a further discussion on the creation of this kind of lists see International Terrorism: Legal Challenges and Responses, A Report by the International Bar Associations Task Force on International Terrorism (Transnational Publishers 2003) chapters 4 and 6. 19- For a discussion of Swedish legislation in this situation see Cameron op.cit. See also Ove Bring, Per Cramr and Gran Lysn concerning relevant Swedish legislation in Vera Gowlland (ed), National Implementation of UN Sanctions (Koninklijke Brill, 2004) 20- Ibid. There are now several cases pending before Community Courts based on these articles. 21- The Swedish Financial Inspection Agency (Finansinspektionen) sent a letter to all nancial institutions informing them about Regulation 2580/2001, FI Dnr 02-247-010, 2002-01-16. 22- The latest promulgation list, SFS 2003:575, includes Regulation 2580/2001. 23- Lag om straff fr nansiering av srskilt allvarlig brottslighet i vissa fall. 24- Ibid. See Section 2 points 1 and 2. 25- Ibid. Section 8 26- Ibid Sections 9 and 7. 27- See Camerons lengthy discussion of these points op. cit. For a further discussion on 28- The ECTHR has at least made clear that states cannot avoid their responsibilities under the ECHR by transferring power to an international organization.
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29- Cameron op.cit. Cameron goes on to discuss possible arguments against the legality of a listing decision. 30- Members of the Kurdish PKK have been refused asylum although allowed to remain in the country and more recently two Egyptian citizans were actually deported to Egypt. 31- Chapter 8 Section 1 of the Immigration Act (SFS 1989:529) and Section 10 Special Control of Foreigners Act (SFS 1991:572) which refers to Chapter 8 Section 1 of the Immigration Act. 32- The two Egyptians mentioned in note 28, Ahmed Agiza and Mohamed El Zary, were deported to Egypt after the Swedish government received guarantees that they would not be given a death sentence or be tortured. This deportation has been severely criticized by various human rights agencies of the Council of Europe and the UN. 33- See CAT/C/CR28/6, 6 June 2002. For a further discussion of this problem see Chapter 4.7 in International Terrorism: Legal Challenges and Responses op.cit.
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98 101 103 110 111 113 114 116 118

International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists

Time to Redress a Grave Injustice

International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists

The London Declaration Symposium of Parliamentarians and Jurists 22 March 2005

International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists

International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists

International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists

International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists

International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists

International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists

International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists

International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists

International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists

International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists

International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists

International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists

Proscription of PMOI remains a blot on the democratic landscape

International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists

International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists

International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists

International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists

International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists

International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists

International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists

PMOIs case is a very shocking example of arbitrary proscription

International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists

International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists

International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists

The inclusion of the PMOI in the terrorism list is scandalous

International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists

International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists

Terror label against PMOI is capitulation to the dictates of the ayatollahs

International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists

International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists

International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists

International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists

Iranian Resistance is a major ally in confronting mullahs dangerous fundamentalism

International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists

International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists

International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists

Let us end the hypocrisy and de-list the PMOI

International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists

International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists

Inclusion of PMOI in terrorism list was a gross, outrageous abuse

International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists

International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists

Right to resist oppressive regimes must be recognised in terrorism legislation

International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists

International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists

International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists

PMOI blacklisting has put thousands in jeopardy in EU states

International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists

International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists

International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists

Proscription of PMOI was a good-will gesture to Tehran

International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists

International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists

Britains reputation as Mother of All Democracies is at stake

International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists

International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists

International Conference of Parliamentarians & Jurists