Brussels, 31/05/2016 (Agence Europe) - Simply belonging to a terrorist organisation should not be enough to automatically prevent an asylum-seeker being granted refugee status, and national authorities should ensure that the person in question actually contributed to or carried out an act of terrorism, said European Court of Justice Advocate General Eleanor Sharpston on Tuesday 31 May.
Sharpston was presenting her conclusions to the European Court of Justice in case C-573/14 where the key issue is whether refugee status can be refused if somebody was a member of a terrorist organisation without actually carrying out or being the instigator of an act of terror.
The case concerns a Moroccan found guilty by the Belgian legal system of involvement in the activity of the Moroccan Islamic Combattant Group (GICM) and having actively contributed to organising the sending of volunteers to Iraq. The status of refugee was granted in the end when he raised the fear of being subject to persecution if sent back to Morocco and the risk of being listed as a radical Islamist and Jihadist following his conviction in Belgium.
Sharpston says the authorities have a wide room for manoeuvre for refusing to grant refugee status even if an individual has not been found guilty of terrorist crimes listed in the EU framework decision of 2002 (475/JHA) on the fight against terrorism. However, the authorities must assess each case individually. This implies that simply being a member of a terrorist organisation is not enough in itself to lead to automatic exclusion.
The Advocate General proposes a number of criteria to guide the national authorities when deciding on the level of involvement of an individual in the activity of a terror organisation having 'implications for peace and international security.' While exclusion must not be automatic, it is not limited to people who actually carry out acts of terror, and should extend to individuals who facilitate terrorism. The competent authorities should examine the structure of the terror organisation in question, the individual's position within it and his ability to influence the group's activities. If the individual is suspected of having a connection with a specific attack, it is necessary to know the degree of his involvement in planning and decision-making and whether he financed the attack of provided ways for other people to carry it out. Sharpston says that in order to be taken into account, the terror act does not necessarily have to be “particularly cruel”. (Original version in French by Jan Kordys)