European Top Court Keeps Hamas ‘Terrorist’ Designation
Hamas fighters testing a Gaza-made M-75 long-range missile, November 2012 Image by Getty Images
(JTA) – The European Union’s top court reversed an earlier ruling from 2015 that said the Palestinian Islamist militia was unjustly blacklisted by Brussels as a terrorist group.
Wednesday’s ruling’s by the Luxembourg-based European Court of Justice was on an appeal made by European Union justice officials against the 2015 ruling by the General Court of the European Union, which is an administrative tribunal.
Judges in the European Union’s most senior court ruled that Hamas should remain on an EU-wide blacklist and referred the case back to a lower court. The judges dismissed the arguments regarding technical errors in the process of blacklisting Hamas, that led to the initial ruling, according to the Associated Press.
Hamas’ military wing was added to the first EU 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.
The lower court’s ruling in 2015 triggered a furious reaction by Israeli diplomats and some leaders of Jewish organizations and communities.
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