RIYADH, Oct 1(Arab News): The nine-year ordeal of Saudi businessman Yassin Abdullah Al-Qadi, once listed by the US Treasury as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT), ended Thursday with a European Union court exonerating him of all terrorism charges.

The Luxembourg-based EU's General Court struck down an order freezing the funds of Al-Qadi, suspected of links with Al-Qaeda, saying that his rights had been violated.

This is the second major legal victory for Al-Qadi, who was also acquitted of terror-funding charges by a court in the southern district of New York on Sept. 15.

The verdict by the European court means that Al-Qadi, whose assets were frozen in 2001, can now access them within two months unless an appeal is launched by other EU institutions, according to a copy of the judgment made available to Arab News.

Belgian Ambassador Michel Lastschenko, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the EU, refused to comment on the verdict.

"Given the lack of any proper access to the information and evidence used against him, Al-Qadi has also been unable to defend his rights with regard to that evidence in satisfactory conditions before the courts of the European Union, with the result that it must be held that his right to effective judicial review has also been infringed," said the judgment.

Al-Qadi was subjected to economic sanctions because he was suspected of ties to terrorism. The US Treasury classified Al-Qadi as a SDGT, while he was also named in United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1267 and 1333.

The EU had also applied sanctions to Al-Qadi since then. In 2007, the European Court of Justice overturned sanctions against Al-Qadi by individual EU governments on the grounds he had not been offered the chance to seek a judicial review.

In fact, none of the bodies that took action against Al-Qadi made public any of the evidence leading to the sanctions.

The case in the EU's General Court, whose judgment was made on Thursday, dates back to the terrorist attacks on New York on Sept. 11, 2001. In the wake of the attacks, the UN Security Council ordered the assets of a number of alleged Al-Qaeda supporters, including Al-Qadi, to be frozen.

The EU implemented that order in Oct. 2001. Al-Qadi appealed, and after a lengthy legal battle, the EU's upper court, the European Court of Justice, ruled in 2008 that his rights had been breached because he had not been informed of the reasons for his blacklisting. It gave EU institutions three months to provide the reasons.

Within two months, the European Commission sent Al-Qadi a summary of the reasons, and re-imposed the asset freeze.

Al-Qadi asked to be shown the evidence leading to the decision, and when the commission did not send it, he appealed again.

The EU General Court found that the commission “did not grant (Al-Qadi) even the most minimal access to the evidence against him,” thereby breaching his right to a fair hearing, and overruled the decision. Under EU rules, the asset freeze should now expire in two months' time.