(Huffington Post-UK) Toby Greene - The Terrorism Act 2000 came into force in the UK in February 2001, making possible the proscription of foreign terror groups. When the list was drawn up under then-Home Secretary Jack Straw, only the military arms of Hamas and Hizbullah were named, as opposed to the organizations in full. Correspondence leaked to journalist Martin Bright between Home Office and Foreign Office officials from 2005 indicated that this was a policy decision made by ministers, and that the intelligence services did not support making a distinction between political and military wings of either organization. Both Hamas and Hizbullah had appeared in their entirety on the U.S. list of foreign terrorist organizations since the mid-1990s. Year by year the case for proscribing Hizbullah has only grown. Hizbullah fired 4,000 rockets at Israeli civilians in 2006, turned its weapons on fellow Lebanese in 2008, had four of its operatives indicted for murdering former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in 2011, and in the past year has been helping Syria's Bashar al-Assad butcher his own people. The writer is Director of Research for BICOM-Britain Israel Communications & Research Centre.
2012-09-25 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive