LONDON, October 21. /TASS/. The UK has removed the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham group (HTS, banned in Russia) from the list of terrorist organizations to deepen cooperation with the new Syrian leadership, the government said in a statement.
"The government’s decision to remove Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) from the list of proscribed terrorist organisations will mean closer engagement with the new Syrian government and support UK foreign and domestic priorities, from counter-terrorism to migration and chemical weapons destruction," the statement said.
The deproscription of HTS means that the proscription offences set out in the Terrorism Act 2000, including the offences of membership and inviting support for proscribed organizations, will no longer apply to HTS. On completion of this deproscription, a total of 83 organizations will be proscribed by Great Britain.
Relations with Damascus
Relations between Britain and Syria deteriorated sharply in 2011 after the outbreak of the civil war in the Arab republic, in which London sided with the armed opposition. In January 2012, the Kingdom evacuated its diplomats from Damascus.
At the end of November 2024, armed opposition groups launched a new large-scale offensive against the positions of the Syrian army. On December 8, they entered Damascus, and Bashar al-Assad resigned as president and left the country. At the end of January 2025, the new authorities said that the leader of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, Ahmed al-Sharaa, would serve as president during the transition period.
In March, the UK began lifting sanctions from Syria — restrictions were lifted from some banks, including the central bank, and oil companies. Later, London excluded the law enforcement agencies and local media from the sanctions list.
The Russian Foreign Ministry on double standards
On October 21, Sergey Naryshkin, Director of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), said that the United States and its allies continue to purposefully blur the concept of international terrorism by applying double standards to assessing internal conflicts in other countries. As an example, he cited "attempts by the White House to remove the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham group from the list of terrorist organizations."