EU court upholds 9/11 terror asset freezes

LUXEMBOURG (Reuters) – A top European court on Wednesday
threw out challenges by two terror suspects to freezes on their
assets imposed in a global clampdown on people linked to al
Qaeda and the Taliban after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Chafiq Ayadi, a Tunisian national resident in Ireland, and
Faraj Hassan, a Libyan national detained in a British jail, had
complained that the freezes on their bank accounts and assets
infringed their rights and asked for them to be annulled.

But the Luxembourg-based European Court of First Instance
ruled that European Union authorities had the competence to
impose such a sanction to fight terrorism.

“Such a measure does not infringe the universally
recognized fundamental rights of the human person,” the court
said in a statement, adding that any individual challenges on
such freezes should go first through national appeal channels.

After the September 11 attacks the U.N. Security Council
passed resolutions urging states to freeze the funds of those
suspected of links to al Qaeda and the Taliban, the hard-line
Islamists who sheltered al Qaeda in Afghanistan before they
were ousted by a 2001 U.S.-led invasion.

The same European court ruled last September, in an earlier
case, that EU authorities had the right to impose asset freezes
in the fight against terrorism. A dozen similar appeals are
outstanding.