EU court upholds Hamas terror listing

Luxembourg : The European Union's top court on Wednesday upheld the bloc's decision to put Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas on its terrorism blacklist.

The European Court of Justice overturned a 2014 ruling by the bloc's second highest court, saying it "should not have annulled Hamas' retention on the European list of terrorist organisations".

Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, denounced the decision, which it said "has no bearing on politics".

"We will keep up our legal battle to have Hamas removed from the list of terrorist organisations," a statement from the Islamists said. 

The lower EU court sparked outrage in Israel and Washington when it said Hamasshould be dropped from the list because the bloc had made the decision based on information from the media and internet.

But the Luxembourg-based ECJ said that in doing so, the General Court had "made an error in law" and it would now have to examine the case again.

However in a related ruling, the ECJ said Wednesday that the General Court's 2014 finding that Sri Lankan rebel group the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) should not be on the terror list was correct.

The Hamas ruling came as a surprise since one of the ECJ's senior lawyers had said in an opinion last September that Hamas should not have been included on the terror list because procedural mistakes invalidated the EU decision.