LONDON,— The British government on Tuesday removed the Islamist group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, from its list of banned terrorist organizations, reversing a 2017 decision that targeted the militant Islamist group for its violent campaign in Syria.
HTS, which rose from the remnants of al-Qaeda’s Syrian branch, was a leading faction in the country’s long and bloody civil war.
The HTS group, once known as Jabhat al-Nusra Font, was responsible for numerous attacks, executions, and crackdowns on civilians during its control of parts of northwest Syria.
Britain’s previous ban made it a criminal offense to support or join the organization.
In a statement, the Home Office said the decision to delist HTS was made to open limited channels with Syria’s interim administration, now led by Ahmed al-Sharaa, known as Abu Mohammed al-Golani.
The British government said the change would also support joint efforts to dismantle remnants of Assad’s chemical weapons program.
“The United Kingdom will continue to combat terrorism and hold extremist networks accountable for the violence and instability they have caused across the Middle East,” the Home Office said.
HTS was previously affiliated with both al-Qaeda and ISIS before rebranding itself in 2017. Its leader, al-Golani, once a senior jihadist figure in Iraq, later established al-Nusra Front, which merged into HTS after claiming to cut ties with global terror networks.
Western intelligence agencies, however, have long questioned the sincerity of those claims.
The United States, under the Trump administration, removed HTS from its foreign terrorist organization list in July.
British officials began reviewing their own designation last year, despite concerns that the group’s ideology remains rooted in violent extremism.
Syria’s Economy Minister Mohammad Nidal al-Shaar, speaking in London, told Reuters he hoped U.S. sanctions on Damascus would soon be lifted.
The new Syria Islamist interim government has sought international recognition and the easing of economic sanctions.
(With files from Reuters | Agencies)
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