Terror Strike

The home secretary’s ban on the main Iranian opposition group has been struck out by the Court of Appeal. The appeal court backed the ruling of the Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission that the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, had reached a perverse decision when she refused to remove the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI) from the list of organisations “proscribed” under the Terrorism Act 2000. Smith has been ordered to lay an order before Parliament to lift the ban. The appellants’ solicitor Stephen Grosz, from Bindmans, says: “The effect of the judgment is that the PMOI has been mis-labelled by the British government as a terrorist organisation for years. We shall be pressing the home secretary to lift the ban as a matter of urgency.”