[News] The US removes ETA and four other groups from its list of terrorist organizations

[FNX Magokiler]

The State Department explained that these groups "are no longer involved in terrorist activities" nor do they have the "capacity or intention" to be.

The United States reported this Friday that it removed ETA from its list of terrorist organizations, four years after the criminal gang announced its dissolution. The State Department removes ETA from that list along with four other groups -Aum Shinrikyo, the Shura Mujahideen Council, Kahane Chai and Jamaa al Islamiya- on the understanding that these organizations "are no longer involved in terrorist activities" nor do they have "capacity or intention" to be.

The measure comes 11 years after ETA announced the definitive cessation of violence and four years after its dissolution. In its statement, the State Department explains that it removes these organizations from its FTO (foreign terrorist organization) list, but that it maintains them on another of "specially designated terrorist entities" to maintain its support for legal actions that may be taken against them. . The US government stresses that "these reversals are not intended to ignore or excuse the terrorist acts these groups have committed or the harm they have caused their victims."

But it does recognize the "success" achieved by Spain, Egypt, Israel and Japan in having "deactivated" the threat of these organizations.

 

 

The Department of State reviews this list every five years to determine if the circumstances of the groups that comprise it have changed enough to revoke their designation. On May 3, 2018, the terrorist group ETA announced its definitive dissolution. Thus ended a trajectory of six decades of terrorist violence in the Basque Country that left a balance of more than 850 people murdered and thousands injured, in addition to many other victims among those threatened and exiled due to terrorist intimidation. The band had already announced seven years earlier, in 2011, the definitive cessation of armed violence. On the other hand, the statement informs about the withdrawal from the list of six individuals already deceased, and considered terrorists. They include Farah Mohamed Shirdon, a Canadian who fought with the Islamic State (IS) group in Iraq and Syria, and Abu al-Wardah, an Indonesian Islamic militant and leader of the eastern Indonesian mujahideen, who was killed in a 2016 attack. the country's Army. There is also Musa Abu Dawud, an Al Qaeda terrorist who died in 2018 in a joint operation by Libya and the US; Aliaskhab Kebekov, a Russian Islamist who was killed by Russian security forces in 2015; Ibrahim al Rubaish, "number two" of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula who died in 2015 in a drone attack in Yemen, as well as Mohad Moalim. It also emphasizes that the revocation of these designations and the removal of these deceased individuals from the list keeps the State Department's sanctions system updated, while not implying "any change" in the policy towards the past activities of these terrorists or the organizations to which they belonged.

 

https://www.emol.com/noticias/Internacional/2022/05/20/1061622/eeuu-retira-eta-organizaciones-terroristas.html