The British government announced in an official statement on Tuesday that it has removed the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group from the country’s list of terrorist organizations “in order to engage more closely with the current Syrian government.”
“Abu Muhammad al-Julani, now known as Ahmed al-Shara, the current president of the ruling Syrian government, was the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham before seizing power from Bashar al-Assad.”
The group was listed as a branch of al-Qaeda on the British list of terrorist organizations in 2017.
The British government, in a joint statement from the Foreign Office and the Home Office, stated that removing HTS from the terrorist list is in line with London’s domestic and foreign priorities and allows for closer cooperation with the new Syrian government.
This includes supporting the anti-ISIS mission in Syria, reducing security threats to the UK and helping to destroy the Assad regime’s chemical weapons programme.
