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Joma no longer on European Union's terrorist blacklist
HEADLINES
(The Philippine Star)
Updated December 13, 2009 12:00 AM
BAGUIO CITY , Philippines – Self-exiled Communist Party of the
Philippines (CPP) founding chairman Jose Maria Sison is no longer
on the European Union’s terrorist blacklist.
The judgment of the European Court of First Instance (called the
General Court under the Lisbon Treaty) removing Sison last Sept.
30 from the terrorists list of the EU and unfreezing his bank account
is now final and executory, said Ruth de Leon, international coordinator
of Committee DEFEND in a statement sent to The STAR.
De Leon said the Council of the European Union, through its legal
office, confirmed last Friday to Jan Fermon, Sison’s lead lawyer,
that it has not lodged an appeal of the judgment to the European
Court of Justice within the prescribed period of appeal of two
months and 10 days from judgment date.
The appeal date expired last Dec. 10.
With the final decision, De Leon said, Sison won after more than
seven years of legal struggle.
He was put on the EU terrorist blacklist on Oct. 22, 2002.
De Leon claimed Sison “won his case against the Council of EU before
the European Court in 2007 on procedural issues.”
The EU court ruled that the council violated his rights to be properly
informed of the charge, to be defended by counsel, and to seek judicial
protection, she explained.
Last Sept. 30, the court ruled that he was never investigated, prosecuted
or convicted for any specific act of terrorism and that passing and incidental
statements in Dutch court judgments actually favorable to him on his asylum
case from 1992 to 1997 and on the unproven murder charge against him
in 2007 did not make him a terrorist.
Sison’s comrades claimed the favorable judgment last September “is a
brilliant landmark decision.”
De Leon said the case of Sison against the Council of EU “can move forward
to the stage of determining what compensation shall be made to his lawyers
and to him for the deprivations, violations of rights and moral and material
damages that he has suffered for more than seven years.”
Sison’s battery of lawyers, aside from Fermon, included Filipino Romeo
Capulong, German lawyers Hans Eberhard Schultz and Wolfgang, Antoine
Comte of France and Dundar Gurses of the Netherlands, Rachel Pastores
of the Public Interest Law Center, and Dutch lawyer Bernard Tomlow.
– Artemio Dumlao
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