This is insane! EU court says Hamas should be removed from terror list BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas should be removed from the European Unions terrorist list, an EU court ruled on Wednesday, saying the decision to include it was based on media reports not considered analysis. However, in its ruling, the blocs second highest tribunal said member states could maintain their freeze on Hamass assets for three months to give time for further review or for an appeal to be launched. The EUs foreign policy arm said the bloc continued to view Hamas as a terrorist group. This was a legal ruling of the court based on procedural grounds. We will look into this and decide on appropriate remedial action, spokeswoman Maja Kocijanic said. Israel, which has clashed repeatedly with Europe in recent years over Palestinian statehood ambitions, demanded Hamas remain blacklisted and said the ruling showed staggering hypocrisy toward a Jewish state founded after the Holocaust. It seems that too many in Europe, on whose soil six million Jews were slaughtered, have learned nothing. But we in Israel, weve learned, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. He branded Hamas a murderous terrorist organization. Hamas holds sway in the Gaza Strip and its founding charter calls for the destruction of Israel. It has regularly battled Israel, most recently in a 50-day war this summer. Most Western countries, including the United States, say it is a terror organization, pointing to years of indiscriminate rocket strikes out of Gaza and waves of suicide attacks, primarily between 1993 and 2005. HAMAS BUOYED Hamas says it is a legitimate resistance movement and contested the European Unions decision in 2001 to include it on the terrorist list. It welcomed Wednesdays verdict. The decision is a correction of a historical mistake the European Union had made, Deputy Hamas chief Moussa Abu Marzouk said. Hamas is a resistance movement and it has a natural right according to all international laws and standards to resist the occupation. The EU court did not ponder the merits of whether Hamas should be classified as a terror group, but reviewed the original decision-making process. This, it said, did not include the considered opinion of competent authorities, but rather relied on media and Internet reports. It said if an appeal was brought before the EUs top court, the European Court of Justice, the freeze of Hamas funds should continue until the legal process was complete. In a similar ruling, an EU court said in October the 2006 decision to place Sri Lankas Tamil Tigers on the EU list was procedurally flawed. As with Hamas, it also said the groups assets should remain frozen pending further legal action and the European Union subsequently filed an appeal. The judgment came as the European Parliament approved a non-binding resolution supporting Palestinian statehood. The text was a compromise, representing divisions within the EU over how far to blame Israel for failing to agree peace terms. (Additional reporting by Alastair Macdonald in Brussels, Maayan Lubell and Ori Lewis in Jerusalem and Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza; Editing by Janet Lawrence) news.yahoo/eu-court-annuls-keeping-hamas-terrorist-list-090933288.html
Posted on: Wed, 17 Dec 2014 17:07:37 +0000
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