LONDON, May 7: An Iranian resistance group claimed victory on Wednesday in a seven-year legal battle when three top judges upheld a ruling that the British government was wrong to ban it as a terrorist organisation.

The judges at the Court of Appeal threw out a government challenge to a ruling last November that its refusal to remove the People’s Mujahideen Organisation of Iran (PMOI) from its list of proscribed terrorist organisations was perverse.

The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Nicholas Phillips, said the appeal bid by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith had “no reasonable prospect of success”, and added: “The appropriate course is to dismiss her application.”

Maryam Rajavi, head of the PMOI’s political wing, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, said: “The ruling proves the terror label against the PMOI was unjust.”

In a telephone interview from Paris, she said: “Western governments and the UK owe the Iranian people and the resistance an apology for this disgraceful labelling. It’s time for them to recognise the Iranian people’s struggle for democracy.”—Reuters