LUXEMBOURG, Sept. 3 (UPI) -- An international court in Luxembourg on Wednesday freed the assets of three Swedes suspected of having ties to terrorism, saying their rights had been violated.
The European Court of Justice said the rights of three Somali-born Swedes, "in particular the right to be heard and the right to effective judicial review of those rights, were patently not respected."
The Swedes had their assets frozen after the U.S. Treasury supplied the United Nations. with a list of suspected terrorist organizations after the Sept 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, the Swedish news agency Tidningarnas Telegrambyra reported.
The United Nations adopted the list, then generated its own list. As a U.N. member, Sweden enacted provisions of the list, the report said. The assets of the informal banking network al Barakaat, a Swedish organization that helps people send money to relatives in Somalia, were frozen.
The defendants claimed they weren't given a chance to defend themselves.
"The court showed that human rights must be enforced when we are fighting terrorism, and that there is a guarantee that the battle is about something which is worth protecting, namely the democratic state governed by law," the Swedes' lawyer Tomas Olsson told TT.
