US removes five groups from terrorism blacklist
WASHINGTON – The United States has removed five extremist groups, all believed to be defunct, from its list of foreign terrorist organizations. In notices published in the Federal Register on Friday, the State Department said it removed the groups after a mandatory five-year review of their designations.
Al-Qaida, which was also up for review, was kept on the list, which was created under the federal Immigration and Nationality Act.
“Our review of these five FTO designations determined that, as defined by the INA the five organizations are no longer engaged in terrorism or terrorist activity and do not retain the capability and intent to do so,” the State Department said in a statement. “Therefore, as required by the INA, these FTO designations are being revoked.”
Several of the removed groups once posed significant threats, killing hundreds if not thousands of people across Asia, Europe and the Middle East. The decision was politically sensitive for the Biden administration and the countries in which the organizations operated. It might draw criticism from victims and their families.
The organizations removed are the Basque separatist group ETA , the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo, the Jewish group Kahane Kach and two Islamic groups that have been active in Israel, the Palestinian territories and Egypt.
“These actions are intended to reflect the United States’ resolve to comply with legal requirements to review and revoke FTO designations when the facts compel such action,” the State Department said. “These revocations do not seek to overlook or excuse the terrorist acts each of these groups previously engaged in or the harm the organizations caused its victims, but rather recognize the success Egypt, Israel, Japan, and Spain have had in defusing the threat of terrorism by these groups.”
The groups removed from the list are:
● Aum Shinrikyo (AUM), the Japanese “Supreme Truth” cult that carried out the deadly sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995 that killed 13 people and sickened hundreds more. The group has been considered largely defunct since the executions of its top echelons in 2018.
● Basque Fatherland and Liberty, or ETA, which ran a separatist campaign of bombings and assassinations in northern Spain and elsewhere for decades that killed more than 800 and wounded thousands more, until declaring a cease-fire in 2010 and disbanding in 2018.
● Kahane Chai, or Kach. The Orthodox Jewish group was founded by ultranationalist Israeli Rabbi Meir Kahane in 1971. Members of the group have killed, attacked or otherwise threatened or harassed Arabs, Palestinians and Israeli government officials, but the organization has been dormant since 2005.
● The Mujahidin Shura Council in the Environs of Jerusalem, an umbrella group of several jihadist organizations based in Gaza that has claimed responsibility for numerous rocket and other attacks on Israel.
● Gama’a al-Islamiyya, or Islamic Group–IG, an Egyptian Sunni Islamist movement that fought to topple Egypt’s government during the 1990s.