Iran summoned the envoys of European Union nations in Tehran to protest at the removal of an opposition group from the EU list of terror groups, local newspapers reported on Thursday.
Deputy Foreign Minister Mahdi Safari called in the envoys on Wednesday and registered a protest over the EU decision to drop Iran”s main opposition group, the People”s Mujahedeen of Iran (PMOI), from its list of terror groups.
Safari said the decision showed EU “double-standards and hypocrisy towards terrorism,” the Mehr news agency quoted him as saying.
The EU decided on January 26 to remove the PMOI from its list of terror groups following a legal battle in Britain.
The Luxembourg-based Court of First Instance ruled in December that the EU had wrongly frozen PMOI funds and violated its rights by not justifying why it was placed on the list.
But Safari said the EU move — which triggered noisy protests outside the British embassy in Tehran — was “politically motivated and unacceptable.”
Founded in 1965 with the aim of ovethrowing first the US-backed monarch the shah and then the Islamic regime in Iran, the PMOI has in the past operated an armed group inside Iran.
It was the armed wing of the France-based National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) but it renounced violence in June 2001.
