Anti-Iran PMOI removed from EU terror list

BRUSSELS, Jan. 26 (UPI) -- The anti-Iranian group PMOI has succeeded in a seven-year effort to be removed from the European Union's terrorism blacklist, EU officials said.

EU foreign ministers agreed in Brussels Monday to drop the People's Mujahedin of Iran from their terrorist register despite concerns doing so would damage Europe's efforts to talk Tehran out of building a nuclear bomb, the EU Observer reported.

The decision follows a ruling by British courts last year, which declared after seeing classified evidence the PMOI should be struck from Britain's terror blacklist. The Observer said that ruling generated political momentum for Monday's EU decision.

Analysts say PMOI was established in the 1960s in resistance to the U.S.-backed Shah of Iran and later staged armed attacks against country's current Islamic regime. It renounced violence in 2001 and gave up arms in 2003, but Tehran says it is still a dangerous personality cult centered around exile Maryam Rajavi, who is based in Paris.