Court of First Instance reaffirms its verdict on Council terror lists

The Court of First Instance in Luxembourg today (11 July) handed down two judgments in relation to the Council’s ‘freezing of funds’ counter-terrorism activities, also known as ‘terror lists’.

The Court finds, as it did previously in the ‘Modjahedines’ (= OMPI) case , that certain fundamental rights and safeguards, especially the rights of the defence and the right to effective judicial protection, and also the obligation to state reasons, are in principle fully applicable to the adoption of a Community decision freezing funds pursuant to Regulation No 2580/2001. On the conclusion of its examination of the two cases Sison and Stichting Al-Aqsa, the Court finds that those rights and safeguards were not respected by the Council in its adoption of the contested decisions. Reasons were not given for those decisions, which were adopted in the context of procedures in which the rights of the defence of the persons concerned were not observed and the Court itself was unable to review the lawfulness of those decisions.

In those circumstances, the Court concludes that the contested decisions must be annulled in so far as they concern Mr Sison and Al-Aqsa, respectively.

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http://curia.europa.eu/en/actu/communiques/cp07/aff/cp070047en.pdf