A credible alternative for Iran?

The PMOI

The People's Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI) initially backed the Islamic revolution that brought Ayatollah Khomeini to power in 1979, but has since been seeking to overthrow Iran's Islamic leadership.

Based mainly in Iraq since 1987, the group – called Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) in Persian – was under the protection of Saddam Hussein, Iraq's dictator. The PMOI fought alongside Iraqi forces in the Iran-Iraq war.

The PMOI's fighters were disarmed by US forces following the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and since then have been confined to Camp Ashraf, the PMOI's headquarters.

The PMOI tried to associate itself with the post-election protests that erupted in Iran in 2009, but opposition leaders in Iran such as Mir Hossein Mousavi distanced themselves from the PMOI.

Camp Ashraf

Camp Ashraf, 60 kilometres north of Baghdad, has been the PMOI's main base since the mid-1980s, when the PMOI were under the protection of Saddam Hussein. Since the allied invasion of Iraq in 2003, around 3,500 former fighters have been confined to the sprawling camp, designated by US forces as protected persons under the Geneva Conventions. This has not prevented violent incursions by Iraq's government, a close ally of neighbouring Iran: 34 unarmed residents were killed in April 2011 and 11 in July 2009.

Under a plan agreed with UN mediation, the residents of Ashraf are now being moved in groups to a former US military base, Camp Liberty, on the outskirts of Baghdad, where they are to have their asylum applications reviewed by the UN's refugee agency (UNHCR). That process began last weekend (18 February). The aim is for all residents who qualify for refugee status to relocate to countries abroad.

A terrorist organisation?

The EU's designation of the PMOI as a terrorist organisation in 2002 followed a similar move in the US in 1997. (The US decision is now under review following a court ruling in 2010.)

In 2006, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that the Council of Ministers had failed to provide adequate justification for listing the PMOI as a terrorist organisation. (The ECJ reviewed the legal basis and procedures for the designation, not its substance.)

In January 2009, national foreign ministers had little choice but to remove the PMOI from the EU's list of terrorist organisations. This was a major victory not just for the PMOI but also for civil-liberties campaigners, who had been complaining about the opaque nature of the process by which groups end up on the EU's terrorism list.

In response to the ECJ ruling, the Council of Ministers set up a working group whose main task is the administrative review, every six months, of all groups and individuals on the terrorist list.

Experts say that while the PMOI carried out attacks against westerners in pre-revolutionary Iran, its attacks since then have been against Iranian targets. A spate of assassinations of nuclear scientists inside Iran has been blamed on the PMOI, a claim that observers believe is credible but impossible to verify.