In an article written by its legal editor Joshua Rosenberg, the Daily Telegraph wrote: The Foreign Office says it has evidence that the mullahs of Iran are arming the Taliban in Afghanistan. And the Government is “gravely concerned” that Iran is “providing explosives, detonators and training to the Shi’a militias” who are killing British and US troops in neighbouring Iraq.

Daily Telegraph has evaluated these government assertions in contradiction with terrorist designation of the PMOI, which seeks to replace Ahmadinejad’s regime with a democratically elected, secular government, and considered it as the consequence of a wrong policy.

This daily added: And yet a ban is exactly what Britain has imposed. Among other things, the PMOI is not allowed to raise or hold funds and its leaders cannot visit Britain. Thanks to the courts, however, that ban may soon be lifted.

Daily telegraph emphasizes that in the PMOI’s military operation inside Iran civilians were never targeted and adds: “Since then, the PMOI says it has not been involved in terrorism. It took no part in the Iraq war of 2003 – its members had “protected persons” status – and it has renounced violence.

But Jack Straw, the then home secretary, proscribed the PMOI in March 2001. It has remained a banned organisation ever since, despite two applications to the Home Office for the ban to be lifted.”

Under the Terrorism Act 2000, a proscribed organisation can bring an appeal to a tribunal known, reasonably enough, as the Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission.

In July, the commission heard its first appeal. The case came before a panel of three – Sir Harry Ognall, a former High Court judge from Yorkshire renowned for his bluff, no-nonsense approach, and two QCs, Stuart Catchpole and Lindsay Boswell.
But the PMOI chose not to bring the appeal in its own name.

Instead, the appellants were more than 30 MPs and peers, an extraordinarily distinguished group including a former law lord (Lord Slynn), a former Home Secretary (Lord Waddington, QC) and a former Solicitor General (Lord Archer of Sandwell, QC).

Through their counsel, Nigel Pleming, QC, the parliamentarians said they did not believe the PMOI was now concerned in terrorism.

Mr Pleming argued that the PMOI should be taken off the banned list if there was no current evidence of continued or even recent terrorist activity, and he accused Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, of basing her judgment on misinformation provided by the Iranian regime.

The Daily Telegraph added: The ban has significant practical consequences for the PMOI: its supporters, including the parliamentarians, are regarded by Iran as supporters of terrorism and Britain’s ban forms the legal basis for an EU-wide ban, despite a ruling in favour of the PMOI by the European Court of Justice last December.

True, supporters of the PMOI live openly in Britain and are allowed to demonstrate freely across the road from Downing Street. But the ban also allows Downing Street to demonstrate its support for the Iranian regime.

Lord Archer, a former Labour law officer, said in his witness statement that the PMOI was proscribed “not out of concern for terrorism, but as part of an agreement between the British Government and the Iranian regime in which the PMOI was used as a bargaining chip”.

This claim was “incorrect”, according to Benjamin Fender, the former head of the Iran desk at the Foreign Office, in his evidence for the Government.
But Mr Fender accepted that Iranian ministers and officials had “chosen to discuss the PMOI with their counterparts from the UK and other EU member states on countless occasions”.

He said the Foreign Office had told the Home Office last year that there would be “foreign policy benefits to keeping the PMOI proscribed if it met the statutory test”.

Even more alarmingly, Lord Archer alleged that British and American forces bombed the PMOI’s Iraq bases in 2003, killing some 50 PMOI members, as part of a deal with the Iranian regime to keep Iran out of the Iraq war.

Responding, Mr Fender acknowledged that the Iranians had “expressed concern about the possibility of PMOI attacks on Iran during any military campaign”, adding that British officials had reassured their Iranian counterparts “that we would take the problem of the PMOI in Iraq seriously”.

How seriously? If Britain had agreed to kill non-combatants for political reasons, ministers would be open to accusations that they were responsible for war crimes.