A federal appeals court has reversed course and allowed the Bush administration to enforce a law that makes it a crime to provide personnel or training to organizations that the U.S. classifies as terrorist, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. A three-judge panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco had ruled that the law, originally passed in 1996, was vague and would allow prosecution of people who innocently aid such groups. Yesterday, an 11-judge panel noted that the newly signed national intelligence law included sections tightening some of the language challenged in the case.
The ruling came a day after another panel of the court upheld a part of the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, a ban on financial aid to terrorist groups. The court said that people charged under that law have no constitutional right to challenge the terrorist designation of the group they funded, as long as the group itself can dispute its classification.
Link: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/12/22/MNGA3AFHT71.DTL