The Diplomat
The US State Department yesterday made official the removal of ETA from its list of terrorist organisations and said it wanted to recognise Spain’s “success” in ending the threat from the gang, which in May 2018 announced its disbandment.
ETA was designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation (FTO) under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) in August 1997, when the list was created.
Along with the Basque terrorist group, the Japanese group Aum Shinrikyo -responsible for the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo underground-, the Shura Council of the Mujahedin in the Surroundings of Jerusalem, Israel’s Kahane Chai (Kach) and Egypt’s Gemaa Islamiya were also removed from the list yesterday.
Under the law, the State Department explained in a statement, the lists are reviewed every five years to determine whether the circumstances on which the designation was based have changed so as to warrant revocation.
In the case of ETA, and the other four organisations, they are deemed to “no longer be engaged in terrorism or terrorist activity or maintain the capability or intent to be engaged in terrorism or terrorist activity”, which explains their removal from the list.
“These revocations do not seek to ignore or excuse the terrorist acts in which each of these groups previously engaged or the harm the organisations caused to victims, but rather to recognise the success of Egypt, Israel, Japan, and Spain in defusing the threat of terrorism by these groups”, the State Department stressed.
This, says the department headed by Antony Blinken, seeks to ensure that US terrorism sanctions “remain in place and credible, and do not reflect any change in policy toward the past activities of any of these terrorists or the organisations of which they were members”.
The State Department also stated that all five will continue to be designated as Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) entities. This is due, among other reasons, to the desire to “support law enforcement actions or ensure that frozen assets are not provided to terrorists who are still active”.
“The United States remains committed to combating terrorist activities around the world,” the State Department said.
