Joma no longer on European Union's terrorist blacklist

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