Rebels led by the HTS group captured the Syrian capital Damascus on Sunday.
Britain could reconsider its original listing of the jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) as a banned organization after rebels toppled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. British Minister for Intergovernmental Relations Pat McFadden announced this on Monday, TASR reports, according to a Reuters report.
“We will consider it. I think it will partly depend on the behavior of the group itself,” McFadden told Sky News when asked if the British government would revisit the ban. HTS, as the former branch of al-Qaeda in the United Kingdom, is on the list of banned organizations as a terrorist group. In Britain, as in other Western countries, including the US, it is illegal to support or join it.
“I think it should be a relatively quick decision, so we will have to consider it fairly quickly as the situation develops on the ground,” he told BBC radio.
Rebels led by the HTS group captured the Syrian capital Damascus on Sunday. The current president, Bashar Assad, fled to Moscow with his family. McFadden clarified that no decisions were made against HTS over the weekend despite the circumstances.
Several world governments, including Britain’s, welcomed the end of Assad’s autocratic rule, marking one of the biggest turning points in the Middle East in decades. US President Joe Biden on Sunday called the overthrow of Syria’s long-time president a “historic opportunity” for Syria and its citizens. The United States will cooperate with “all Syrian groups,” he said.
