US removes 5 groups from terror blacklist, retains al-Qaida

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 had 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, or INA.

“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 may draw criticism from victims and their families.

The organizations removed are the Basque separatist group ETA , the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo, the radical 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 AP reported on Sunday that the removals would be coming this week, based on notifications sent to Congress on May 13.

Removing the groups from the list has the immediate effect of rescinding a range of sanctions that the designations had entailed. Those include asset freezes and travel bans as well as a prohibition on any Americans providing the groups or their members with any material support. In the past the material support provision has been broadly defined to encompass money or in-kind assistance, in some cases even medical care.

All but one of the five groups was first designated a foreign terrorist organization in 1997 and have remained on the list for the past 25 years.