Iranian opposition group wins ruling against UK ban

By Mark Trevelyan

LONDON (Reuters) - An Iranian opposition group won a seven-year legal battle on Wednesday when three top judges upheld a ruling that the government was wrong to ban it as a terrorist organisation.

The judges at the Court of Appeal threw out a government challenge to a ruling last November that its refusal to remove the People's Mujahideen Organisation of Iran (PMOI) from its list of proscribed terrorist organisations was perverse.

The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Nicholas Phillips, said the appeal bid by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith had "no reasonable prospect of success", and added: "The appropriate course is to dismiss her application."

Maryam Rajavi, head of the PMOI's political wing, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, told Reuters: "The ruling proves the terror label against the PMOI was unjust."

In a telephone interview from Paris, she said: "Western governments and the UK owe the Iranian people and the resistance an apology for this disgraceful labelling. It's time for them to recognise the Iranian people's struggle for democracy."

The Home Office expressed disappointment with the ruling but a spokesman conceded that the legal case had reached "the end of the line".

"We will not hesitate to re-proscribe the PMOI if circumstances change and evidence emerges that they are concerned in terrorism," the spokesman said.

Alireza Jafarzadeh, former U.S. spokesman for the National Council of Resistance of Iran, told Reuters in Washington he was heartened by the London court ruling and hoped it would serve as a precedent for the United States.