US Supreme Court bans support to designated terrorist outfits

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US Supreme Court bans support to designated terrorist outfits
'PKK and LTTE are deadly groups' - Chief Justice
U.S. Supreme Court upheld a federal criminal law that bans support to designated terrorist organizations, including the LTTE, rejecting a free-speech challenge by groups that say they have peaceful aims.
The court ruled 6-3 that the law can be applied to organizations and U.S. citizens looking to teach nonviolent methods of conflict resolution to LTTE and Turkey's Kurdistan Workers' Party [PKK]. The U.S. has designated both these groups as terrorist organizations.
"The PKK and LTTE are deadly groups," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority. "It is not difficult to conclude as Congress did that the taint of such violent activities is so great that working in coordination with or at the command of the PKK and LTTE serves to legitimize and further their terrorist means," quoting the Chief Justice, Bloomberg reported.
A federal appeals court had said that some parts of the law, which bars "material support" to terrorist groups, couldn't constitutionally be applied to six groups and two U.S. citizens. The government says it has successfully used the law, enacted in 1996 and modified by the 2001 Patriot Act, to obtain criminal convictions, the report further said.
The ruling is a victory for President Barack Obama's administration and U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan, who argued the case for the government, Bloomberg further said.
Some provisions makes it a crime to provide "training," "expert advice or assistance" or "service" to a terrorist organization while other provisions bar providing "expert" scientific or technical advice and "personnel" to terrorist groups.
The dissenting groups said in court papers that they want to teach ways of using "international law and other nonviolent means to advance human rights."
Roberts said even that kind of assistance could legitimately be seen as supporting terrorism. He voiced concern that the groups might teach terrorists how to petition the United Nations and other international bodies for financial assistance.
"Money is fungible," Roberts wrote. "Congress logically concluded that money a terrorist group such as the PKK obtains using the techniques plaintiffs propose to teach could be redirected to funding the group's violent activities."
Courtesy : www.info.gov.lk