European Voice, 8-14 march – In the coming weeks the Council of Ministers will begin sending out documents explaining to groups and individuals why they are included o the EU’s list of banned terrorist movements.
The move marks a departure from previous practice whereby the Council passed judgement on terrorists or terrorist groups by including them on the list, freezing their assets across the EU, without any reason given or right of reply possible.
European Voice, 8-14 march – In the coming weeks the Council of Ministers will begin sending out documents explaining to groups and individuals why they are included o the EU’s list of banned terrorist movements.
The move marks a departure from previous practice whereby the Council passed judgement on terrorists or terrorist groups by including them on the list, freezing their assets across the EU, without any reason given or right of reply possible.
A judgement handed down by the European Court of First Instance in December has prompted the new drive towards transparency but it has not silenced critics of the system.
Much of the impetus for reform has focused on the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI), a group which opposes the Iranian regime and which brought the case against the Council on the grounds that it had been put in the terror list without a fair hearing. “The Court finds that the decision ordering the freezing of the [PMOI’s] funds does not contain a sufficient statement of reasons and that it was adopted in the course of a procedure during which the right of the party concerned to a fair hearing was not observed,” a statement from the court said.
The Council read the judgement as a warning that it need to change the procedures by which groups or individuals were put and kept on the list. The Finnish presidency of the EU had been anticipating the ruling and had started the reform process last July, which takes the form of contacting those put on the list with a “statement of reason” explaining their inclusion and allowing them to respond. Further reform is expected this year on assessing more thoroughly why a group or individual is kept on the list, says one diplomat.
The new procedures were first carried out when nine individuals jailed in the Netherlands were included on the list last December. The Council has subsequently written to the PMOI telling it why it is being kept on the list with the group replying to the Council last week (1 March).
But the PMOI says the Council is breaking its own rules and violating the law by not taking the group off the list altogether. The group says that since June 2001 it has renounced violence and that most details cited by the Council as reasons why it should be kept on the list go back to events that took place in the 1990s. One incident cited refers to “commando operations” on the border of Iran and Iraq in 2000-01 but gives no details as to what took place. “The Council’s statement of reasons contains no new information after five years of blacklisting,” says Mohammad Mohaddessin, a member of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which is the umbrella organisation for groups including the PMOI.
An individual organisation is included on the list initially at the instigation of a member state and Mohaddessin claims that the UK is responsible for the group being put on the terror list in response to pressure from Iran, with which the EU has been involved in sensitive negotiations over its nuclear programme.
The Council says there are no specific rules as to how a group or individual is taken off the list. But, explains one official, the “seriousness of the proof that they have renounced violence” needs to be taken in consideration.
While the PMOI has succeeded in forming a strong lobby for its case there does not appear to be much support within the Council for its stance. Diplomats point to its history of initially supporting the Iranian revolution and subsequent link to Saddam Hussein when it fell out with the Tehran regime and went into exile.
“There is the history of the PMOI, the fact that it has changed sides. It has declared a ceasefire but it is not an easy case. It is showing a good face to the West but there is the link to Saddam and other things,” says one diplomat.
But the list is causing other problems for member states. Hamas’s inclusion means that the EU’s political dialogue and funding in the Palestinian territories has been made difficult. Hizbullah, on the other hand, has not been included on the list because it is part of the Lebanese government and including it on the list would prompt problems akin to those with Hamas.
Many believe it is time that the Council reformed the procedures around the list to remove accusations that it is bending the law to fight terrorism. “The list is put together [in] such an untransparent way … there is an urgent need for normal procedures to be brought in,” says Florian Geyer, research fellow at the Center for European Policy Studies.
Although opening up the procedures means the EU’s reasons for putting individuals or groups on the list can be contested in public, many diplomats say this is a positive development. “The list is a tool that can be effective but which also affects individuals’ lives, so it is very sensitive,” says another diplomat.