AP: The Obama administration will remove from the U.S. terrorism list an Iranian  militant group formerly allied with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, officials  said Friday, describing a move that will infuriate Tehran and end years of  high-profile campaigning by the group.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will notify Congress of her intent  later Friday, the officials said. A court order had given her until Oct. 1 to  make a decision about the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, or MEK. The officials spoke on  condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak about the  matter.

Clinton’s decision comes just days after the last big batch of the Iranian  exiles reluctantly left their decades-old paramilitary base in northeastern  Iraq, relocating for now to a refugee camp outside Baghdad. The U.S. had  insisted that the MEK’s 3,000 members comply with an Iraqi demand to leave Camp  Ashraf as a condition of the MEK’s removal from the list of foreign terrorist  organizations.

Derided by its critics as a cult, the group has journeyed through multiple  countries and the shifting alliances of the Middle East over its four-decade  history. The MEK helped Islamic clerics overthrow Iran’s shah before carrying  out a series of bombings and assassinations against the Iranian government. It  fought in the 1980s alongside Saddam’s forces in the Iran-Iraq war, but disarmed  after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. It has since suffered violent  recriminations from Iraq’s new Shiite-dominated government.

The decision to remove the MEK list rested on two factors: whether it still  had the capacity and intent to commit acts of terror. Several American military  officials and defense contractors were killed by the MEK in the 1970s, U.S.  officials maintain, and its attacks have killed hundreds of Iranians. But the  group contended it swore off violence more than a decade ago and now only seeks  a peaceful overthrow of Iran’s theocratic government.

The MEK assembled a high-profile roster of champions even as it remained on  the U.S. blacklist. Luminaries who’ve advocated for the MEK’s removal from the  list include former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, former FBI Director Louis  Freeh, former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed  Rendell and James Jones, President Barack Obama’s first national security  adviser.

That led the Treasury Department earlier this year to examine whether the  officials were providing illegal material support to designated terrorists; that  civil inquiry probably would be nullified now. Removal from the list also should  make it easier for the MEK to raise money and recruit in the United  States.

The organization is far from Iran’s mainstream opposition, however.

The group has an ideology mixing Marxism, secularism, an obsession with  martyrdom and near adoration of its leaders. A 2009 report by the security think  tank RAND accuses it of fraudulent recruiting as well as “authoritarian control,  confiscation of assets, sexual control (including mandatory divorce and  celibacy), emotional isolation, forced labor, sleep deprivation, physical abuse  and limited exit options.”

MEK supporters say this is Iranian propaganda, pointing to several former  members who’ve freely left the group.

It also vehemently rejects the Iranian accusation that members have worked  with Israel to assassinate several Iranian nuclear scientists. U.S. officials  say there is no evidence to suggest recent terrorist activity by the  group.

U.S. officials said Clinton’s letter to Congress would not amount to a final  designation. That will probably come in a couple of weeks as officials unfreeze  assets held by the group in the United States and other legal work that might  allow it to open a U.S. office.

Camp Ashraf is not yet fully closed. An estimated 200 exiles remain there to  try to sell off the property that was left behind in the move, but Iraq’s  government wants them to leave quickly.

The hostility of Baghdad’s Shiite leaders reflect its desire to build  stronger ties with Iran, but also the deep hatred for the group in Iraq because  of its purported role in helping Saddam crush Shiite and Kurdish revolts in the  1990s.

When the MEK handed over its hundreds of tanks and artillery pieces to U.S.  forces, the Bush administration agreed to protect the group and posted soldiers  and a general at the camp for years. The army and the MEK even worked on joint  patrols and other emergency plans.

But for Iraqi authorities the camp remained a no-go zone. In effect, the MEK  attempted to defend a sovereign zone inside the post-Saddam Iraq, which U.S.  officials say contributed to violence.

An Iraqi raid last year left 34 exiles dead.

The MEK has shown footage of the atrocities and gained U.S. support. But it  said it needed the administration to act because the terrorist label helped  Iraqi authorities justify mistreatment of its members and made it harder for  residents to find permanent homes in other nations.

Most of its members are now in Camp Liberty, a former U.S. base designed as a  compromise way-station for the United Nations to speed them out of Iraq  peacefully. Several governments are weighing whether to accept them. Washington  could allow the immigration of some, but none that were actively involved in  terrorist attacks from the 1970s-1990s, officials have said.

After suffering a crackdown under Iran’s monarchy, the MEK helped Ayatollah  Ruhollah Khomeini overthrow U.S.-backed Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi in Iran’s  Islamic Revolution in 1979.

It then quickly fell out with Khomeini, and thousands of its followers were  killed, imprisoned or forced into exile. It launched its campaign of  assassinations and bombings against Iran’s government in retaliation. The U.S.  declared it a terrorist organization in 1997 at a time when Washington sought  warmer relations with Tehran under the reformist presidency of Mohammad  Khatami.

Yet the group also has provided the Americans with intelligence on Iran and  convinced many governments that it has abandoned terrorism. In 2002, it revealed  Iran’s secret work on uranium enrichment near the city of Natanz — intelligence  that many speculated came from Israel’s Mossad.