The European Union asked France's Jean-Louis Bruguiere, the judge who snared Carlos the Jackal, to check whether the United States is respecting privacy guarantees in its campaign against terror financing.

Bruguiere's appointment follows a June 2007 accord setting out conditions for the US Treasury Department to consult Brussels-based international banking network SWIFT in its anti-terrorism investigations.

"Jean-Louis Bruguiere is a prominent and highly regarded figure in counter-terrorism circles both in Europe and the United States," EU Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini said in a statement of Bruguiere's 30-year career in anti-terror operations.

Bruguiere was instrumental in catching Carlos, the Venezuelan urban guerrilla spirited out of Sudan in 1994 and jailed for life in 1997 for the killing of two French policemen. He is now approaching mandatory retirement as a French judge. Data privacy has been a thorn in EU-US relations since Washington stepped up anti-terrorism efforts after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

EU legislators and rights groups have criticised US methods and called for better privacy safeguards. The EU and the United States agreed last year that US authorities could only use SWIFT data for counter-terrorism purposes and keep it for a maximum of five years.

The accord was made after watchdogs said in 2006 that SWIFT broke European privacy laws by allowing the US Treasury Department to secretly consult its records in anti-terrorism investigations after the September 11 attacks.

Brussels-based SWIFT, which handles global financial transfers, is a cooperative owned by roughly 7,800 financial institutions in more than 200 countries that use it. It welcomed the US-EU accord.