BRUSSELS, Feb. 20 (UPI) -- Members of the European Parliament are backing a proposal to set up a special independent body to decide who goes on the EU's terror watch-list.
The Parliament's Civil Liberties Committee on Monday debated the Council of Europe's recent report on the watch-listing issue, with its lead author, Dick Marty.
Italian socialist MEP Claudio Fava criticized the EU watch-list. "Again, we found episodes where people were suspected while they had nothing to do with terrorism," he said, comparing watch-listing with rendition: the much-criticized extra-legal transfer of terrorist suspects to third countries carried out by the CIA with assistance from European agencies.
The EU list, created in 2001, is used to freeze the assets and restrict the movements of suspected terrorists and their organizations, but Marty's report for the Council of Europe found that the process of adding persons or entities to the list lacked transparency; and the absence of any effective way off the list or redress for those wrongly labeled violated the rule of law.
Marty's report called for an independent authority to be established to supervise the watch-listing system, noting that "today, most of the people targeted are Muslims, but tomorrow this person could be you or me."
German liberal Alexander Alvaro warned that the lack of fairness and transparency could end up making the watch-list counterproductive, by making it appear that even those correctly listed were the victims of some injustice. "If we foster sympathy among people for terrorists, then that's totally wrong," he said.
