Tehran on Wednesday condemned a planned move by Washington to remove an Iranian opposition group based abroad, the People's Mujahedeen of Iran, from its blacklist of designated terrorist groups.
Tehran
on
Wednesday condemned a planned move by
Washington
to
remove an Iranian opposition group based abroad, the People's Mujahedeen of
Iran, from its blacklist of designated terrorist groups.
"The United States' double standard in dealing with terrorism and
instrumental use of these groups for political gain is not a new issue,"
foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast was quoted as saying by state
media.
"If the
U.S.
government goes ahead with this move, then it will be accountable for the blood
of thousands of Iranians and Iraqis spilt by this cult... and it weakens world
efforts in combating terrorism," he said.
The
U.S.
is
poised to remove the group, also known as the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), from
the list of terrorist groups,
U.S.
lawmakers said on Friday.
The move comes just days ahead of an October 1 deadline set by a
U.S.
appeals court by which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had to decide on the
fate of the group.
The MEK, whose leadership is based in
Paris
, has
invested much money and years of intense lobbying to be taken off the list.
The leftwing group was founded in the 1960s to oppose the Shah of Iran, and
after the 1979 Islamic revolution that ousted him it took up arms against
Iran
's
clerical rulers.
The MEK says it has now laid down its arms and is working to overthrow the
Islamic regime in
Tehran
through peaceful means.
It has no support in
Iran
itself, and no connection to domestic opposition groups.
The chief of
Iran
's
judiciary, Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani, was quoted by his official website
(dadiran.ir) as saying that "the leaders of this group must be handed over
to the Iranian people and government and be put on trial and receive their
punishment."
He added that "the American government and their allies should know
this... terrorism may exist anywhere and no country is immune to the dangers of
terrorism."
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, currently in
New
York
for the U.N. General Assembly, also spoke of the
issue in a meeting with a group of American academics this week, according to
the presidency website (presidency.ir).
"Removing them (the MEK) from terrorist groups list, smacks of a double
standard," he was quoted as saying.
Ahmadinejad added that the group was behind the killing of "more than
16,000 Iranian citizens and assassinated a number of very popular Islamic
Republic officials."
The
U.S.
designated it a "foreign terrorist organisation" in 1997, putting in
a category that includes Al-Qaeda, the Palestinian Hamas and
Lebanon
's
Hezbollah.
The State Department deems the MEK responsible for the deaths of Iranians as
well as
U.S.
soldiers and civilians from the 1970s into 2001.
The MEK's delisting would end a complex legal battle fought through
U.S.
and
European courts.
Britain
struck the group off its terror list in June 2008, followed by the European
Union in 2009.
In June this year, the U.S. Court of Appeals in
Washington
said
that if
Clinton
didn't decide whether to deny or grant the group's request to be delisted
within four months, it would issue a special writ and remove the group itself.
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