EU court adviser PKK terror-list case admissible

LUXEMBOURG, Sep 27 (Reuters) A Turkish Kurdish politician is entitled to challenge the European Union's inclusion of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) guerrilla group on its list of terrorist organisations, an adviser to the EU's top court said.

The European Court of Justice's advocate-general said the EU's number-two court was wrong to dismiss a lawsuit by Osman Ocalan seeking to have the PKK removed from the blacklist, which requires member states to freeze the movement's assets.

The Turkish government blames the PKK for more than 30,000 deaths since the group launched an armed struggle for a Kurdish homeland in southeast Turkey in 1984. Attacks have increased since the PKK called off a unilateral ceasefire in 2004.

The lower Court of First Instance ruled in February last year that imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan's brother, who had brought the case on behalf of the PKK, could not act on the party's behalf.

''The Court of First Instance should not have dismissed the application against the inclusion of the PKK on a list of terrorist organisations as being inadmissible,'' Advocate-General Juliane Kokott said in an opinion today.

''The Court of First Instance will therefore still have to decide whether it was correct to include the PKK on that list.'' The case is politically sensitive because Turkish nationalists accuse Brussels of promoting Kurdish separatism by insisting on cultural rights such as broadcasting and schooling in the Kurdish language as conditions for EU membership.

Kokott's opinion is not binding, but the top court follows the advice of its advocates general in a majority of cases.

The adviser said the lower court had made ''an error in law'', according to a court statement.

''It was incorrect to conclude from Mr Ocalan's explanation that the PKK no longer existed, that he could therefore no longer represent it. In so doing, the Court of First Instance distorted his evidence,'' it said.

The opinion also said the fact that the Council of European Union member states had continued to designate the PKK as a terrorist organisation meant the PKK had to be entitled to appeal against inclusion on the list.

The United States, like the European Union, blacklists the PKK as a terrorist organisation.

REUTERS AB PM1512