Syria's Jolani meets UK diplomats, urges Britain to lift sanctions

British diplomats have held talks with Abu Mohammed Jolani, leader of the Syrian opposition group that overthrew the Assad government.

Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) is a proscribed terrorist organisation in the UK and expressing support for the group is a crime. However, British diplomats were photographed with Jolani, whose real name is Ahmed al-Sharaa, in Damascus on Monday.

This came after Downing Street insisted last week that it could still engage with HTS without violating the government's anti-terror legislation. 

Jolani met with Stephen Hickey, director of the Middle East department at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), and Ann Snow, the UK’s special representative for Syria.

HTS said the discussions focused on the "latest developments" in Syria, while the foreign office told Middle East Eye that the talks aimed to explore how Britain could support a peaceful, Syrian-led transition process. 

In an interview with The Times, Jolani urged Britain and other countries to lift all sanctions imposed on Syria under Bashar al-Assad's brutal authoritarian rule. 

"They should lift all restrictions which were imposed on the flogger and the victim. The flogger is gone now. This issue is not up for negotiation," Jolani said.

He further called on Israel to end its air strikes and withdraw from Syrian territory that it took after Assad's fall.

HTS, a proscribed terror group

On Monday, Foreign Secretary David Lammy said the meeting between British diplomats and Jolani "underlies our commitment to Syria".

It has raised speculation in some quarters that the Labour government may remove HTS from its list of designated terrorist organisations. 

HTS has been a proscribed terrorist organisation in Britain since 2017 and is listed by the Home Office as an "alternative name" for al-Qaeda, the armed group that carried out the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York.

Jolani told The Times on Monday that the terrorist label was a "political designation" and better described Assad's government. 

"We did military activities," he said. 

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

Speaking to the BBC, Lammy said: "Al-Qaeda is responsible for a tremendous loss of life on British soil.

"We will judge them [HTS] on their actions. I won't comment on future proscription, but of course, we recognise that this is an important moment for Syria," he added.

It remains unlikely that the British government will delist HTS unless Washington takes similar steps first. 

The meeting in Damascus came just after the UK announced on Sunday that it would channel £50m ($63.6m) in humanitarian aid for Syria and Syrian refugees.

The foreign office said around £120,000 will be given to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), an intergovernmental body based in The Hague.

A total of £30m will be allocated for food, shelter and emergency healthcare in Syria, while £10m will be distributed to Lebanon and Jordan through the World Food Programme and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Jordan.