MPs, Lords and lawyers called for the People's Mojahedin Organisation of Iran to be removed from Britain's list of terrorist organisations last week. But behind the Westminster conferences and high-profile support, lies the personal battle of a 20-year-old from Finchley trying to clear his father's name. LAWRENCE MARZOUK reports

A few seconds of tape are the only memories Hanif Jazayeri, 20, of Ballards Lane, has of his father. The recording holds the voice of Hassan Jazayeri teaching Hanif a few words of his native Farsi.

Hassan Jazayeri was executed by the Iranian regime for his membership of the People's Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI) not long after the tape was made Hanif was three at the time.

"I did not have an emotional relationship with my father," said Hanif. "I was very young when he died. I know about him through his friends. They told me a lot about him. There was also a tape of his voice when he was teaching me Farsi that I listen to."

In 2000, the PMOI was outlawed as a terrorist organisation in what Hanif believes was an insult to what his father believed in and an attempt to pander to the Iranian regime for economic gain.

The ruling also prevents Hanif from supporting a cause he believes is just a cause for which his father died.

"My father was a member of the mojahedin and a member of the opposition," said Hanif. "He was executed when I was about three. The Iranian regime didn't give much details for what reasons. Because he was the opposition he was executed."

Hanif has been on a gap year since passing his A-levels in September. But unlike most gap-year students who use the months of post-A-level freedom to fly to exotic destinations, Hanif is on a different mission. "I want to get this sorted out before going to university," he said.

At a conference last week, which Hanif helped to organise, Lords, MPs including Rudi Vis, MP for Finchley and Golders Green and lawyers such as Geoffrey Bindman and Imran Khan, criticised the inclusion of the PMOI among terrorist organisations.

Lord Slynn of Hadley told the conference: "It is to be remembered that in the explanatory notes attached to Order 2001 of the Terrorism Act 2000, the UK Government clearly stated that the PMOI has not attacked UK or Western interests'.

"At an international conference of 500 jurists from several European countries and the United States in Paris in October, legal opinions were presented to the effect that the PMOI had not been shown to be such a group.

"It seems to Professor de Cara an international lawyer and me, on what we have seen, that there is a strong case for the removal of the PMOI from the British list of terrorist groups."

Maryam Rajavi, the president of the Iranian resistance, added by a videolink from Paris: "The terrorist label against the Iranian resistance is not only a move against an opposition movement. It is capitulation to the dictates of the ayatollahs, and a barrier to change in Iran.

"The only real and effective option is to support democratic change by the Iranian people and its resistance organisation."

The PMOI participated in the 1979 ousting of the Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, Iran's former Shah, but the group was quickly at loggerheads with the clerical government, and launched a campaign of assassinations and bombings against the regime.

Although the mojahedins' military activities have almost disappeared during recent years, the PMOI was grouped with organisations such as al-Qaeda as part of the Terrorism Act 2000.

Since then, and despite some detractors who have claimed that the group is still a hotbed of militancy, many prominent figures have come out in support of the organisation.

For Hanif, the ruling means that he cannot support the cause and fight for a free Iran'. "I cannot go back to Iran," he said. "If you are a child of a mojahedin, then you are ten times worse. You will be automatically given the death sentence.

"At this conference, we wanted to deal with a number of issues and look at how it has affected people in this country.

"For me, it was when I was in boarding school in Mill Hill Mill Hill School, in The Ridgeway that I started to understand and realise about politics, at about 16.

"About the same time, the PMOI were labelled terrorists. That tore me apart. I found it very hard that my father had been executed and it was very offensive that the Foreign Office labelled him as a terrorist. It was a very unjust ruling. I consider him a freedom fighter, not a terrorist.

"This ruling affects the whole population of Iran, and the hundreds of thousands of Iranians who live in the UK. It means it is illegal for me to go out and wear a T-shirt in support of my father's cause and go into the street. You cannot support them because they are labelled terrorists."