Eurasia Press & News
TEHRAN (FNA)- The European Union is responsible for its negative and pernicious decision to remove the name of the anti-Iran terrorist group, the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO), from its blacklist, Iran announced.
The European Union decided Monday to remove the MKO from its blacklist, a move which angered Iranian people and officials.
The 27- nation bloc’s foreign ministers, meeting in Brussels, decided to drop MKO from the blacklist. The MKO had been blacklisted as a terror organization by the EU since 2002.
In a letter to the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and President of the Security Council Jean-Maurice Ripert, Iran’s Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations Mohammad Khazaee condemned the EU decision and reminded that the terrorist group is responsible for a number of criminal acts in Iran and Iraq.
Criticizing EU’s selective and double-standard attitude towards the terrorist groups, he said the act undermines global efforts to uproot terrorism.
Khazaee concluded that the EU should be accountable to the victims of MKO terrorist acts and is responsible for the negative consequences of its decision.
The MKO, whose main stronghold is in Iraq, is blacklisted by much of the international community, including the United States.
The MKO is behind a slew of assassinations and bombings inside Iran, a number of EU parliamentarians said in a letter last year in which they slammed a British court decision to remove the MKO from the British terror list. The EU officials also added that the group has no public support within Iran because of their role in helping Saddam Hussein in the Iraqi imposed war on Iran (1980-1988).
Many of the MKO members abandoned the terrorist organization while most of those still remaining in the camp are said to be willing to quit but are under pressure and torture not to do so.
A May 2005 Human Rights Watch report accused the MKO of running prison camps in Iraq and committing human rights violations.
According to the Human Rights Watch report, the outlawed group puts defectors under torture and jail terms.
The group, founded in the 1960s, blended elements of Islamism and Stalinism and participated in the overthrow of the US-backed Shah of Iran in 1979. Ahead of the revolution, the MKO conducted attacks and assassinations against both Iranian and Western targets.
Leaders of the group have been fighting to shed its terrorist tag after a series of bloody anti-Western attacks in the 1970s, and nearly 30 years of violent struggle against the Islamic Republic of Iran.
In recent months, high-ranking MKO members have been lobbying governments around the world in the hope of acknowledgement as a legitimate opposition group.
The UK initiative, however, prompted the European Union to establish relations with the exiled organization now based in Paris. The European Court of First Instance threw its weight behind the MKO in December and annulled its previous decision to freeze its funds.
The group started assassination of the citizens and officials after the revolution in a bid to take control of the newly established Islamic Republic. It killed several of Iran’s new leaders in the early years after the revolution, including the then President, Mohammad Ali Rajayee, Prime Minister, Mohammad Javad Bahonar and the Judiciary Chief, Mohammad Hossein Beheshti who were killed in bomb attacks by MKO members in 1981.
The group fled to Iraq in 1986, where it was protected by Saddam Hussein and where it helped the Iraqi dictator suppress Shiite and Kurd uprisings in the country.
The terrorist group joined Saddam’s army during the Iraqi imposed war on Iran (1980-1988) and helped Saddam and killed thousands of Iranian civilians and soldiers during the US-backed Iraqi imposed war on Iran.
Since the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, the group, which now adheres to a pro-free-market philosophy, has been strongly backed by neo-conservatives in the United States, who also argue for the MKO to be taken off the US terror list.