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| Europe |
| 6 Danes convicted of selling T-shirts to fund Palestinian terror |
| 2009-03-26 |
| The Danish Supreme Court on Wednesday convicted six people of supporting terrorist groups by selling T-shirts, but handed down suspended sentences. The six were charged under anti-terrorism laws with using proceeds from the T-shirt sales to fund the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The defendants were members of the activist group Fighters+Lovers that said it wanted to fund a FARC radio station and a PFLP print shop. Both FARC and PFLP have been labeled by the European Union as terrorist groups. Two of the six were sentenced to six-month suspended terms, the Supreme Court ruled. The other four received suspended prison sentences ranging from 60 days to four months. After the Supreme Curt ruling, one of the six, Katrine Willumsen, told Danish news agency Ritzau it was "a political sentence." The group planned to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. In September, the Eastern High Court sentenced two of the defendants to six-month jail terms. The others received suspended prison sentences ranging from 60 days to four months. A seventh suspect was acquitted of the charges. The activist group began selling the T-shirts over the Internet in January 2006. A few weeks later, the T-shirts were seized and the bank accounts frozen. The Eastern High Court in its ruling cited reports from human rights watchdogs, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, the United Nations and the Danish security and intelligence service PET listing alleged terrorist acts by FARC and PFLP. |
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