Skip to content. | Skip to navigation

Personal tools
Sections
You are here: Home Breaking news EU court dismisses Zimbabwe sanctions appeal

EU court dismisses Zimbabwe sanctions appeal

22 April 2015, 14:42 CET
— filed under: , , ,
EU court dismisses Zimbabwe sanctions appeal

Photo © Yanchenko - Fotolia

(BRUSSELS) - A top European Union court dismissed Wednesday an appeal by Zimbabwe's attorney general and more than 100 other figures linked to the Harare government, who said they should not have been hit with EU sanctions.

The 28-nation bloc has been steadily easing visa ban and asset freeze sanctions against Zimbabwe's ruling elite in the hope of encouraging reforms, but has left President Robert Mugabe and his wife on the blacklist.

Zimbabwe Attorney General Johannes Tomana, as well as 109 other people including top police and army officers, plus 11 companies, had called on the General Court of the European Union to annul the sanctions order in a case they filed in 2012.

A year later, Brussels took most of them off the list.

The General Court, second only to the European Court of Justice, said however that they were correctly identified as close to Mugabe's government and its "serious infringement of human rights".

Tomana had been put on the sanctions list because he had "engaged in activities that seriously undermine democracy, respect for human rights and the rule of law", the court said in a statement.

The inclusion of the other individuals and companies were broadly comparable, it said.

Other individuals and companies had been placed on the list for similar reasons, it said.

The court said there was an adequate legal basis for the sanctions since the positions they held "are such that it is legitimate to characterise them as leaders of Zimbabwe or as associates of those leaders and thereby to justify, on that ground alone, their being listed".

The ruling is important because if the court had ruled that Tomana and his fellow plaintiffs had been incorrectly included on the sanctions list, they may have then had the possibility of seeking legal redress against the EU.

The EU first imposed sanctions against Zimbabwe in 2002 over its rights record.

Mugabe, now 91, earlier this year took up the one-year rotating chairmanship of the African Union, saying that he cared little for what the West might say.

"If they want to continue it's up to them but these sanctions are wrong," he said at the time, adding: "If Europe comes in the spirit to cooperate and not the spirit to control us and control our ways, they will be very welcome."

Judgement of the General Court in case T-190/12 - Tomana and Others v Council and Commission


Document Actions