STRASBOURG, Oct 2, 2008 (AFP) - The European Court of Human Rights Thursday dismissed a petition by a cartoonist fined for satirising the 2001 attacks in New York, who claimed his right to free expression had been violated.

The Strasbourg court ruled 42-year-old illustrator Denis Leroy expressed his 'moral solidarity' with the authors of the attacks with his political cartoon in a Basque newspaper -- published just two days after the September 11 strikes in New York and Washington.

A French court in 2002 fined Leroy 1,500 euros (2,000 dollars in today's terms) for 'complicity in apologising for terrorism' with his drawing that appeared in a Basque daily depicting the decimated World Trade Centre with the tagline: 'We all dreamed about it ... Hamas did it.'

But Leroy, who goes by his moniker Guezmer, argued the ruling violated his right to free expression. He said he simply meant to express his anti-Americanism and the decline of the United States.

The Strasbourg rejected his argument, ruling the cartoon's message was all the more inflammatory as it was published in the Basque region -- where ETA separatists have been waging a 40-year independence campaign that has killed more than 800 people on the Spanish side of the border.