LUXEMBOURG, Jan 23 (Reuters) - The EU infringed the rights of a Swedish-Somali money transfer business by implementing U.N. terrorism sanctions against it, a court adviser said on Wednesday in the latest setback to the sanctions regime.
EU Advocate General Poiares Maduro said the bloc should annul the freezing of funds of the Al Barakaat International Foundation, blacklisted after the U.N. put it on its list of groups and people suspected of supporting terrorism after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States in 2001.
The Swedish branch of Barakaat, a business which handled remittances from Somalis to their families back home, has challenged the lawfulness of the European Union regulation that implemented the U.N. sanctions by translating them into EU law.
"The appellant's claim that the contested regulation infringes the right to be heard, the right to judicial review, and the right to property is well founded," Maduro said.
The EU's Court of Justice "should annul the contested regulation in so far as it concerns the appellant," he added in his written reasoning.
The opinion of the advocate general is not binding but the Court of Justice follows it in most cases.
The advice by a senior legal expert is the third direct challenge to the EU's terrorism sanctions regime in 13 months.
Last week, Maduro said in a similar case that the EU infringed the rights of a Saudi businessman, Yassin Kadi, when it implemented U.N. terrorism sanctions against him.
The cases raise an important question of international law: whether the EU must unquestioningly implement rulings from the U.N. Security Council, or whether it has a duty to make sure such decisions respect people's basic rights.
Critics have long challenged the fairness of the U.N. terrorism blacklist, saying it subjects individuals to harsh penalties -- freezing their assets and preventing them from travelling -- without giving them a court hearing or disclosing the evidence against them.
In response, the U.N. Sanctions Committee has implemented some reforms aimed at making it easier for people to get their names removed if they have been wrongfully blacklisted.
In December 2006, another EU court annulled the bloc's decision to put an Iranian resistance group, the People's Mujahideen Organisation of Iran (PMOI), on a separate blacklist, ruling it had not given the group a fair hearing or adequate reasons. (Reporting by Ingrid Melander; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
SOURCE: Reuters, January 23, 2008