Britain could rethink its proscription of “Hayat Tahrir al-Sham” (HTS) as a banned organization, after the group spearheaded the Syrian armed opposition forces’ alliance that helped oust President Bashar al-Assad, British senior minister Pat McFadden said on Monday.
“We will consider that. And I think it will partly depend on what happens in terms of how that group behaves now,” McFadden told Sky News, when asked if the British government would look at the proscription of HTS again.
HTS, a former al-Qaeda affiliate, is a proscribed organization in the UK, meaning that Britain, like other Western nations including the US, designates it as a terrorist group, making it illegal to support or join it.
“I think it should be a relatively swift decision, so it’s something that will have to be considered quite quickly, given the speed of the situation on the ground,” he told BBC Radio.
McFadden, a senior member of Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s cabinet of ministers, said no decisions on HTS had been taken over the weekend, after the Military Operations Administration seized the Syrian capital Damascus and al-Assad fled to Russia.
International governments including Britain’s have welcomed the end of the al-Assad’s regime, which marks one of the biggest turning points for the Middle East in generations.
