The Spanish Supreme Court has ruled that giving money to a jailed terrorist or his family is not a crime, thus acquitting a Moroccan man and liberating him from a 5-year prison sentence for having sent funds to the wife of a jailed terrorist responsible for the Casa Blanca bombings. The said bombing caused 45 deaths, amongst them three Spaniards.
Consequently, the Supreme Court has set a precedent that makes it legal to raise funds for the families of terrorists that are serving prison sentences – until now, it was considered aiding and abetting terrorism.
Last June, Wissan Lifti was found guilty of aiding and abetting terrorism after being arrested in 2008. The judge considered that Sr. Lifti had ideas akin to Salafismo and that since the year 2000 he had been creating converts to the cause of Al Qaeda, holding meetings at a butcher’s shop in Burgos.
The said butcher’s was run by one Bouchaib Maghder, who later travelled to Morocco in December 2002, where he was arrested on he charge of being a terrorist ideologue, a full five months before the attacks took place. When Wissan Lifti found out that the arrest had taken place he set about raising funds to aid the man’s family from November 2003 to October 2007. She in turn, handed it over to her husband.
“Handing money over to the wife or family of a man convicted of terrorism cannot be described as financing terrorism, concludes the Supreme Court ruling, as it considers such aid as humanitarian. The Supreme Court also pointed out that the Basque regional government pays an allowance to the families of convicted ETA terrorists whilst they are in prison and it would ludicrous to suggest that the said regional government is ‘financing terrorism.’
Finally, the Supreme Court further rapped the knuckles of the national law courts for ruling that Lifti was a member of a terrorist gang or even in fact that he collaborated with one, because it was not proved in Spain that the butcher, Maghder was a terrorist himself – the national law court based its decision merely on press cuttings and condemnable proof, nor did they even obtain a copy of the Moroccan court ruling that sent him to prison.
(News: Spain)