The Washington Post reported Wednesday that President Biden will not revoke the terror designation of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the al-Qaeda offshoot that took power in Damascus following the ouster of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
That means Syria’s de facto leader and founder of HTS, Abu Mohammed al-Julani, who has been going by his real name, Ahmad al-Sharaa, will still be considered a terrorist by the US government for the remainder of the Biden administration.
Despite Julani being labeled a terrorist due to his al-Qaeda history, high-level US government officials met with him recently and removed a $10 million bounty that was on his head. The Biden administration has also issued a general license waiving sanctions to allow some transactions with the HTS-led government.
US officials told the Post that the decision about the terrorist designation will now be up to the Trump administration. They said HTS must show that it has really broken from al-Qaeda for the designation to be lifted, though HTS’s history did not stop the US from supporting the HTS takeover of Syria.
Julani has said there will likely be no elections in Syria for four years, and the new “transitional government” is made up of HTS officials and foreign jihadists who have been appointed to senior positions in the military. Videos have emerged online of Syria’s new justice minister, Shadi al-Waisi, overseeing the execution of two women in 2015 over charges of adultery and prostitution.
Al-Waisi oversaw the executions in areas of Idlib that were under the control of the al-Nusra Front, an al-Qaeda affiliate founded by Julani that merged with other Islamist groups in 2017 to form HTS.
