Former FBI analyst Matt Levitt has written an analysis of the recent EU court decision that could conceivably lead to Hamas being removed from the EU list of terrorist organizations. The report begins:
Hamas
December 16, 2014 In the latest sign of the legal troubles facing the European Union’s designation regime — the authority under which governments can freeze funds and economic resources of illicit actors — the EU General Court is expected to annul the terrorist designation of Hamas on December 17. The judgment comes on the heels of a similar action in October that annulled the Council of the European Union’s designation of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) on similarly procedural grounds. Although the new judgment is not expected to acquit Hamas of charges related to violence, it comes at a time when the group’s terrorist and militant activities are on the rise. And like the LTTE, Hamas will surely point to the judgment as ‘evidence’ that it is not a terrorist entity.
BACKGROUND On September 12, 2010, Hamas appealed its designation as a terrorist entity under the EU’s Common Position 931. In 2002, the EU had banned the group’s military ‘wing,’ the Izz a-Din al-Qassam Brigades, but not its social or political branches. Yet in September 2003, following a series of Hamas suicide bombings during the second intifada, the EU expanded the listing to include the entire group, though several European countries agreed to the action only skeptically.
