The U.S. Treasury Department has announced new sanctions against Hasan Nasrallah and others.
The U.S. Treasury Department has announced new sanctions against Hasan Nasrallah, head of the Lebanon-based, Iranian-supported terrorist group Hezbollah.
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Hezbollah's Leaders Sanctioned
Nasrallah was first designated a terrorist by the U.S. government in 1995 for acts of violence aimed at disrupting the Middle East peace process. The new sanctions have been imposed because of Hezbollah’s role in providing support for Syrian President Bashar al Assad’s ongoing campaign of violence against the Syrian people.
The sanctions mean that any assets Hasan Nasrallah may have under U.S. jurisdiction are frozen; and no American citizen can conduct any business with him.
Two other senior terrorist leaders of Hezbollah, Mustafa Badr al-Din and Talal Hamiyah, were also designated for aiding Hezbollah’s terrorist activities in the Middle East and around the world.
The Treasury Department said in a statement that Al-Din is believed to have replaced his cousin, Imad Mughniyah as Hezbollah’s top militant commander after Mughniyah’s death in 2008. In 2011, the prosecutor of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon charged Al-Din and three other Hezbollah members with the 2005 attack that killed former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and 21 others.
Talal Hamiyah is the head of Hezbollah’s External Security Organization, which maintains organized cells world-wide, and is responsible for the planning and execution of Hezbollah’s terrorist attacks outside of Lebanon.
The Treasury Department pointed out that “Hezbollah and its leader Hasan Nasrallah have sought to depict their organization as a social and political party, as well as a resistance movement. These efforts are belied by the facts: Hezbollah consistently uses terrorism against civilian targets to achieve its goals, and this trend has only increased recently.”
In addition to the training and logistical support Hezbollah has given to Assad to brutally suppress the Syrian people, the Treasury Department noted that the “last year has witnessed Hezbollah’s most aggressive terrorist plotting outside the Middle East since the 1990s.”
U.S. Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David Cohen said that “Hezbollah’s actions, overseen by Hasan Nasrallah and executed by Mustafa Badr al-Din and Talal Hamiyah, clearly reveal its true nature as a terrorist and criminal organization.”
The Treasury Department’s imposition of sanctions helps to further expose Hezbollah’s real tactics and aims.