Terrorism Act 2000 (Proscribed Organisations) (Amendment) Order 2008

My Lords, people can argue about what the PMOI has done in the past—and the Minister delved into history—but that is not the point. The tests here, in front of both courts, is whether the PMOI is presently—not in the past, distant or near—concerned in terrorism or preparing to be concerned in it. The Government’s argument at both the Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission and the Court of Appeal can be summed up this way: once a terrorist, always a terrorist. This is a nonsense. Both courts, after considering all of the evidence, open and closed for security reasons, rejected that argument and found no evidence to support assertions that the PMOI was concerned in, or preparing to be concerned in, terrorism. This order rights a great wrong done to the 4,000 members of the PMOI, part of Iran’s resistance coalition. They sit in exile in the deserts of Iraq because the theocratic regime in Tehran has stolen their freedom and slaughtered around 120,000—yes, that is right—of their friends and supporters. Why was this ban put in place? The then Home Secretary said it was because the mullahs insisted upon it as the price of opening talks with the EU on its nuclear weapons development programme. Ludicrously, in making the ban, the Government said that the PMOI had no presence in the UK and no record of harming British or western interests anywhere in the world. Who are the terrorists? It is not the PMOI which makes and supplies the roadside bombs which slaughter British and coalition troops in Iraq and Afghanistan; that is done by the mullahs' private army, The Revolutionary Guard, itself labelled as a terrorist organisation by the United States. This resistance revealed two weeks ago that an estimated eight out of every 10 of the roadside bombs slaughtering our British troops come from Iran, smuggled across the border on 51 networks. Details of these networks and those who run them have been given by the resistance to the coalition forces and to our own Ministry of Defence. It is not the PMOI which is seeking to build nuclear weapons; it was the resistance which revealed the secret sites where this work was going on and, last year, corrected a wrong estimate made by the United States intelligence outfits that they had stopped work on these sites, when they had scattered this nuclear development in 12 sites around the country making it harder to monitor and inspect even when the mullahs agree. It is hard to understand why the Government refused our request to deproscribe the PMOI. When challenged by 35 Members of your Lordships’ House and those in another place, the Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission ruled that that refusal was, "““perverse … flawed and must be set aside””." Scathingly, it added that it was, "““in the (perhaps unusual) position of having before it all of the material that is relevant to this decision. In our view, that is a requirement of the 2000 Act””." In plain English, what the POAC decided was that the Government had got the law wrong, ignored the evidence and asked the wrong questions, which led them to come to this perverse and flawed decision. When the Government appealed to the Court of Appeal, they had their nose rubbed once more in the evidence they had ignored, when the Court of Appeal said, "““Closed material was also available to the applicant"—" that is, to the Government— "““We have considered that material. It has reinforced our conclusion that the applicant could not reasonably have formed the view … that PMOI intended in future to revert to terrorism””. " That is a damning indictment of the way the Government have handled this matter. The Government now have a duty to ask the EU to remove the ban on the PMOI imposed at their request and I want to ask the Minister to tell me tonight how and when and how soon this will be done. The order will give new hope to those millions inside Iran who cry freedom and want to see their country a respected member of the international community, rather than a pariah—a country which respects human rights, not least the rights of women, and ends its nuclear weapons development and its murderous interference in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Gaza and elsewhere. Iran will be free. Freedom may be delayed but it cannot for ever be denied.