U.S. Adds 11 Islamist Groups to Annual Blacklist

The United States on Wednesday added 11 militant Islamist organizations to its lists of “terrorist groups,” reflecting closer attention paid by U.S. policy-makers to the Muslim world in the war on terrorism. The new second tier list of 38 “other terrorist groups” issued by the State Department also included two new non-Islamic groups — the Communist Party of Nepal and the New Red Brigades in Italy. The list of secondary groups acts as a watch list for the first-tier list of “foreign terrorist organizations” (FTOs) on which the United States imposes sanctions. The annual Patterns of Global Terrorism report did not change the list of FTOs, which now has 36 groups. The State Department removed one group from the second-tier list — the Orange Volunteers, a pro-British group in Northern Ireland which appears to be dormant. Two groups were promoted to the list of “foreign terrorist organizations” during 2002 — the communist New People’s Army in the Philippines and Jemaah Islamiya in Indonesia, which has been linked to a bombing on the resort island of Bali. Full Story