NCRI – Members of the European Parliament’s Civil Liberties Committee have criticized the European Union’s mechanisms for blacklisting "terrorists" as unfair and opaque and have called for changes to the EU’s system of putting people on its terror list.
"The EU lawmakers were debating a report by Dick Marty, a member of the human rights watchdog Council of Europe, which harshly criticizes the union’s blacklisting practices due to a lack of transparency and legal deficiencies," EUobserver reported on Wednesday.
Mr. Marty pointed to the fact that once a person is included on the EU terror list, there is "no possible procedure for taking him or her off that list." "So their assets are frozen and their movements restricted, regardless of their claim to innocence," he said.
"The procedures need to be made more fair and transparent. The rule of law cannot be short-circuited like that," the former Swiss prosecutor concluded. His report to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on the issue was adopted by majority members of the Assembly last month which said the EU Council "is no longer following the rule of law" for maintaining the PMOI in its terror list.
The issue came to prominence after an EU court annulled a 2005 decision to by EU Council to keep the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK), the main Iranian opposition group, on the union’s blacklist.
In December 2006, the European Communities’ Court of First Instance (CFI) overturned an EU Council decision to freeze the assets of the group and ruled that PMOI should be removed from the EU blacklist. The Council up to now has defied the ruling.
In January 2008, The European Parliament in a resolution underscored the rulings by the CFI and the British court denouncing terror designation of the PMOI.
