(JTA) — A European court annulled Hamas’ inclusion on a blacklist of terrorist groups, saying the 2001 decision was based on press and Internet reports and not legal reasoning.
The decision Wednesday by the Luxembourg-based General Court of the European Union kept Hamas’ assets frozen for three months pending appeals and emphasized that it does “not imply any substantive assessment of the question of the classification of Hamas as a terrorist group.”
“The General Court finds that the contested measures are based not on acts examined and confirmed in decisions of competent authorities but on factual imputations derived from the press and the Internet,” it said.
In a statement, Moshe Kantor, the president of the European Jewish Congress, ridiculed the reasoning.
“All the judges had to do was read the Hamas Charter and then have someone translate the thousands of videos and statements released to the public in Arabic which openly call for and glorify the murder of innocent civilians, men, women and children,” he said.
Hamas’ military wing was added to the first European Union blacklist of terrorist groups, issued in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington.
Hamas’ political wing was blacklisted in 2003.
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