The European Union's highest court on Wednesday overturned a 2001 decision by EU governments to freeze the assets of a Saudi businessman and a Sweden-based charity suspected of funding Al-Qaeda terror groups. The Court of Justice ruling breaks with a UN anti-terror order obliging UN member states to freeze assets of people and entities it suspects of funding terror groups. The court acknowledged that the reasons for freezing the assets of Yasin Al-Qadi and the Al-Barakaat International Foundation may be justified. But it said the order failed to offer those on a terror blacklist any legal rights to a judicial review under European law. “The rights of the defense, in particular the right to be heard and the right to effective judicial review of those rights were patently not respected,” the court ruling said. It is not clear whether EU nations, which have set up a joint terror blacklist, will unfreeze the assets. Yasin Al-Qadi, head of the Saudi-based Muwafaq Foundation, appealed against the EU's decision to freeze his assets. US Treasury officials allege the organization is an Al-Qaeda front used to funnel millions of dollars (euros) to Al-Qaeda. Al-Barakaat International also appealed, trying to get some 1 million Swedish kroner ($152,247) unfrozen. Lawyers for the charity have claimed the money was being used to fund aid programs for families in Somalia. The court said Wednesday that the 27-nation EU “is required” to inform the person that the assets are being frozen and why “as swiftly as possible” after the decision is taken, to allow those people the right to legal recourse. Swedish lawyer Thomas Olsson, who represented Al-Barakaat in the case, welcomed the ruling. Olsson said he would now examine ways of having the assets released to the Somali immigrants in Sweden who used the network to send funds to relatives in Somalia. “We have to examine the judicial consequences of this verdict. The sanctions remain on a UN level,” he said in Stockholm. Wednesday's ruling by the bloc's highest court calls into question international efforts to stop the financing of terror groups, notably Al-Qaeda. Other suspects and groups on an EU terror blacklist have also won legal victories for similar reasons against being listed, but have so far not had their assets unfrozen or their names removed from the EU's blacklist. Wednesday's ruling said the lower EU court's judgment “erred in law” in saying that EU courts had no jurisdiction to review the legality of the contested order to freeze the assets of those deemed to be funding terror groups by the United Nations. Separately, the EU's high court has previously overturned an EU decision to freeze the assets of the People's Mujahedeen of Iran, an exiled Iranian resistance movement that is on the bloc's terror blacklist. It also recently overturned a decision to freeze the assets of an exiled Philippine rebel leader and the Netherlands-based Al-Aqsa foundation because they were not informed why their assets were frozen, a breach of EU law.
