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Money quote(s):
"A DC Circuit panel has issued an opinion giving the State Department four months maximum to make a final decision on PMOI’s petition to revoke its status as a designated foreign terrorist organization. The issue has been somewhat high profile, as that status is the predicate for material support liability under 18 USC 2339B and various immigration-law constraints…and because PMOI is an entity hostile to the government of Iran, with a considerable amount of support in Congress for its delisting."
6/3
From my archive of press clippings:Washington TimesEDITORIAL: PMOI's place on the terrorist watch list
People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran should be cleared
By THE WASHINGTON TIMESTuesday, January 12, 2010Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit hears the case of People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran v. United States Department of State. The State Department says the PMOI is a terrorist organization. The PMOI says the United States is falling for Iranian propaganda.
Read the whole article here.Snippet(s):"The PMOI was founded in 1963 as a violent anti-Shah movement. It supported the revolution that brought the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to power, who returned the favor by executing the group's leaders.""The group renounced violence in 2001, and it has not engaged in terrorism since. A U.S. Intelligence Community Terrorist Threat Assessment acknowledged that there "has not been a confirmed terrorist attack by [the PMOI] since the organization surrendered to Coalition forces in 2003."
The PMOI has assisted the United States in Iraq by warning Coalition troops against planned attacks by Iraqi insurgents. The PMOI also has provided critical information on Iran's secret nuclear program, such as the first reports of hidden facilities at Qom and Natanz.""Removing the PMOI from the list of foreign terrorist organizations is one of the few issues on which both parties in Congress agree.""\The United Kingdom and European Union have removed the group from their terror lists, which has created a disconnect with America's allies that complicates policy-making. The political rationale that put the PMOI on the U.S. terror list also has changed. The Clinton administration tagged the PMOI as terrorists in October 1997 as a means of reaching out to Iran's newly elected moderate leader Mohammad Khatami.""America's terror list has become an enabler for Iran's state terrorism."&"Taking the PMOI off the terror list acknowledges that the group has put violence behind them, creates a credible incentive for other terror groups that might desire to reform their ways, and removes a tool from the hands of a theocratic regime bent on terrorizing its own people."
