WASHINGTON – The United States has updated its list of foreign terrorist organizations, highlighting the influence of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network in many parts of the world.
The U.S. State Department says Osama bin Laden is involved in seven of the terrorist groups on its current list of 25 terrorist organizations, his al-Qaida network, plus six other groups based in the Middle East, North Africa and Asia.
Osama bin Laden is the prime suspect in the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, and an international coalition has been demanding that Afghanistan dismantle al-Qaida training camps there.
The State Department says the al-Qaida network has ties to a wide variety of terrorist groups, Islamic Jihad of Egypt as well as Gama’a al-Islamiyya, which has led a series of deadly attacks in Egypt. The Bin Laden terrorists also are linked to Algeria’s Armed Islamic Group, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, the Kashmiri militant group Harakat ul-Mujahidin, which operates in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the Abu Sayyaf group, based in the Philippines.
A report by the Library of Congress, completed just before last month’s terrorist attacks, estuimated that Osama bin Laden has about 3,000 militant followers, operating in at least 34 countries. U.S. law requires a freeze on all financial transactions involving foreign terrorist groups, and bars access to the United States for any of their members. Despite those sanctions, al-Qaida had a network of followers in the United States who allegedly were involved in last month’s attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The U.S. list is meant to include all foreign terrorist groups whose activities threaten the United States or U.S. nationals. It names a number of groups from the Middle East, the Palestinian group Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine; the militant Jewish group Kahane Chai, or Kach; and the Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah. The list also includes the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC.
Two groups added to the list this year are the Colombian paramilitary group AUC and the Real IRA, an offshoot of the Irish Republican Army. Two groups removed from the 1999 list were the Japanese Red Army and Tupac Amaru, a Peruvian guerrilla group.
