How UK could strip HTS of terror status, as officials say former al-Qaeda affiliate has changed

The British government is considering removing Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) from its list of designated terrorist organisations following the group's victory in Syria and the fall of the Assad dynasty.

Such a move raises questions about how the country would legally go about revoking the designation.

Since 2017, HTS has been listed by the UK's Home Office as an "alternative name" for al-Qaeda, the armed group that carried out the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001.

Although Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Monday that it was "far too early" to make a decision on the status of HTS, Cabinet Office minister Pat McFadden said there would be a "relatively swift decision", and the issue "would have to be considered quite quickly".

Significantly, there is precedent for proscribed British terrorist organisations being delisted. 

One recent example is the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), an anti-Gaddafi group formed in 1990 by Libyan veterans of the fight against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

The British government listed the LIFG as a proscribed terrorist organisation in 2005, describing it as seeking to establish a "hard-line Islamic state" and "part of the wider Islamist extremist movement inspired by al-Qaeda". The LIFG denied it was linked to al-Qaeda.

But in November 2019, the LIFG was delisted from the government's list of proscribed terror organisations - even after it emerged that Salman Abedi, the Manchester Arena bomber who killed 22 people in May 2017, was influenced in part by LIFG members. 

Parliamentary process

Since Bashar al-Assad was toppled, there has been speculation that HTS could be delisted as a terrorist organisation.

But the government cannot simply choose to remove its proscribed status. The home secretary, Yvette Cooper, is only able to consider deproscription if an organisation or person affected by proscription submits an application for it. 

According to the Home Office, LIFG was removed from the list of terrorist organisations "following receipt of an application to deproscribe the organisation".

If an application is submitted for HTS to be deproscribed, the home secretary would have 90 days to make a decision.

If the government decided to deproscribe HTS, an order to do so would have to be laid before parliament and passed by both the House of Commons and the House of Lords.

Since Labour enjoys a strong parliamentary majority, it is unlikely that the government would face any significant obstacle in delisting the group. 

There has been mounting support for HTS to be deproscribed to allow the UK to officially engage with the organisation.

Lord Ricketts, a former UK national security adviser, has called on Britain to work with its G7 partners to "do some very rapid due diligence and lift proscriptions together", since "the window of opportunity to influence the various insurgent groups to work together on inclusive governance may well be short".

Former MI6 chief Sir John Sawers has also called for the UK to reassess its proscription of HTS.

He, like others, argued this week that the organisation has changed significantly in the last several years.

In 2016, HTS leader Abu Mohammad Jolani (whose real name is Ahmed al-Sharaa) publicly broke with al-Qaeda and has since pledged protection for minorities and to respect Syria's diversity.

'It would be rather ridiculous, actually, if we're unable to engage with the new leadership in Syria'

- Sir John Sawers, former MI6 chief

Sawers told Sky News he thinks Jolani "has made great efforts over the last 10 years to distance himself from those terrorist groups.

"Certainly, the actions we've seen of Tahrir al-Sham over the last two weeks have been those of a liberation movement, not of a terrorist organisation," he said after Assad was toppled.

"It would be rather ridiculous, actually, if we're unable to engage with the new leadership in Syria because of a proscription dating back 12 years."

McFadden appeared to take a similar approach, telling the BBC on Monday that Jolani "has distanced himself away from some of the things that have been said in the past. He is saying some of the right things about the protection of minorities, about respecting people's rights."

He added: "We don't know what will happen in Syria right now, whether it's going to be a better future for the country, or whether it's going to be more chaos, no one can be certain about that right now.

"But obviously, if the situation stabilises, there'll be a decision to make about how to deal with whatever new regime is in place there."

However, Emily Thornberry, the Labour chair of the foreign affairs select committee, warned the government against making a decision too quickly.

"The last thing the Syrian people want is to have one tyrant replaced by another one who’s got an Islamic flag," she said.

However, there seems to be a broad sense within the government that HTS must be engaged with.

Under the UK's terror legislation, it is illegal to arrange or manage any meeting "in the knowledge that it is to support a proscribed organisation". 

It is similarly illegal to invite support for or glorify a proscribed terrorist group.

Despite this, on Tuesday, Downing Street was keen to stress that the British government can still engage with HTS, with Starmer's official spokesman saying: "The fact that HTS is a proscribed terrorist group does not prevent the government from engaging with HTS in the future."

He explained that engagement "could, for example, include meetings designed to encourage a designated group to engage in a peace process or facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid".

The Biden administration's approach

Ultimately, it is unlikely that the British government would delist HTS unless the United States did it first. 

The Biden administration is considering the matter - Middle East Eye reported earlier this week that officials discussed the merits of removing a $10m bounty on Jolani.

Jolani has been designated as a terrorist by the US since 2013, while the HTS was proscribed by the Trump administration in 2018.

President Joe Biden said just hours after the fall of Damascus that the US would assess "not just [the rebels'] words, but their actions". 

But President-elect Trump, who will be entering office in just five weeks, has said that Washington "should have nothing to do with it [Syria]" - while not mentioning the Syrian opposition or the US's Syrian allies. 

The US backs rebels operating out of the al-Tanf desert outpost on the tri-border area of Jordan, Iraq and Syria.