EU stopt met geheimhouding van terreurlijst (en)

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - EU states are planning to lift the veil of secrecy surrounding how names appear on their list of terrorist entities "in the near future" - but in the meantime member states are breaking their own laws, some lawyers say.

The list - which numbers 54 individuals and 50 groups - sees EU states vote every six months on which names should go in or out on the basis of secret evidence submitted by "competent national authorities" with "guilty" parties facing stigma and frozen bank accounts.

But following a December 2006 ruling by the EU court in Luxembourg, suspects will now be sent "statements of motivation" setting out the evidence against them and instructions on how to mount a legal challenge in a potential watershed for EU security work.

Eight Dutch Islamic radicals and a Kurdish group added to the list on 28 December were the first ever to be sent motivation statements since the EU launched the list in 2001, with EU officials saying everybody on the 104-strong register will enjoy the same treatment when it comes up for its next six month review.

"The persons and entities were informed individually and really got all the reasons in the case," an EU official explained. "Where it is possible to contact people, the spirit of the court ruling will also be closely implemented when the full list is renewed in the near future."

The December court ruling annulled a 2002 decision to put Iranian anti-government group OMPI on the register, saying the EU violated OMPI's "fundamental right" to a fair trial after EU lawyers could not even say which "competent authority" had submitted the secret evidence against it.

The OMPI precedent will boost the chances of Philippino alleged terrorist Jose Sison winning his appeal on 1 February and Dutch-Palestinian group Al-Aqsa winning its case in autumn, in a potential u-turn after EU courts in 2005 rejected a similar plea by Somalia's Ahmed Yusuf Ali.

Is the EU breaking its own laws?

For now OMPI remains on the list. Its funds in France - over €7 million - remain frozen and OMPI fund-raising activity remains illegal with EU top legal advisor Jean-Claude Piris saying the court ruling relates to the 2002 decision only and not the last time the list (including OMPI) was renewed in May 2006.

EU officials are also dismissing as a mere "procedural problem, unrelated to the core issue" the fact it did not renew the list in November 2006 - the last deadline under its own statute on six month reviews - and has still failed to set a firm date despite promising action "in the near future."

But OMPI's laywers as well as some independent experts say lack of respect for proper procedure is at the core of a problem in EU security culture, which allows counter-terrorist agencies to work with impunity and national governments to cut political deals behind the "security" screen.

"The [EU] council's position is illegal because it does not respect its own statute and doubly illegal because it does not respect the ruling of the court - that any list containing OMPI has been annulled," OMPI lawyer Jean-Claude Spitzer told EUobserver.

"How can the EU expect others to abide by the law if it does not do so itself?" Sarzin Hashemi, a spokesman for OMPI-related group NRCI, said, adding that the UK pushed to get OMPI on the terror list back in 2002 in order to cosy up to the Iranian regime.

How much will they reveal?

"All this ambiguity...comes from the fact that EU and US governments are reluctant to follow their own courts when it comes to the fight against terrorism," Brussels think-tank CEPS' legal expert Florian Geyer said. "This will have to change."

Meanwhile, question marks remain on the quality of information in the new "statements of motivation" with EU officials saying they must stay confidential on privacy grounds and are "something in between" a "full 100-page intelligence dossier" and a "simple EU form."

"There is a fear that this will be used as an alibi procedure, that it will not reveal the true information at the bottom of the case, maybe not even which member state or security authority has put people on the list," CEPS' Mr Geyer said.