JEDDAH: Saudi Arabia said on Tuesday it and Bahrain had added Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps and senior officers of its Quds Force to their lists of people and organizations suspected of involvement in terrorism.
The Saudi state news agency SPA quoted a statement from the security services saying Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force, and the force’s Hamed Abdollahi and Abdul Reza Shahlai were named on the list.
The US Department of the Treasury in 2011 alleged that Soleimani, Abdollahi and Shahlai were linked to a plot to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s former ambassador to the United States and current foreign minister of the Kingdom, Adel Al-Jubeir, and imposed sanctions on them.
Saudi Arabia’s State Security Presidency and the Terrorist Financing Targeting Center, a US-Gulf initiative to stem finance to militant groups, sanctioned and designated 9 individuals associated with the Afghan Taliban and their Iranian facilitators.
The center was established in May 2017 during US President Donald Trump’s trip to Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia and the United States co-chair the group and Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates are also members.
“In a collective effort to identify, tackle and share information related to terrorist financing networks and their activities of mutual concerns, including threats emerging from countries supporting terrorism and terrorist organizations, and in coordinating among Terrorist Financing Targeting Center Members to take actions, including designating and other measures against the terrorists and their financial networks, TFTC co-chair (Saudi Arabia and the US), as well as the other TFTC Members (Bahrain, the UAE, Kuwait, Oman, and Qatar), a statement on SPA read.
Some of those mentioned were already on US and UN sanctions lists.
They also labeled the following Taliban figures including Iranian facilitators:
1. Mohammad Ebrahim Owhadi
2. Esmail Razzavi Abdullah Samad Farugui
3. Mohammad Daoud Muzzamil
4. Abdulrahim Manan
5. Mohammad Naim Barich
6. Abdulaziz Shah Zamani
7. Sadr Ibrahim
8. Hafiz Abdulmaj
This action is the third collective TFTC designation action since the center was launched.
The office of the Revolutionary Guards and Iran’s foreign ministry were not immediately available for comment on Tuesday. The Quds Force is the extraterritorial branch of the Revolutionary Guards.
The action will result in the freezing of all assets, properties and related revenues of the named individuals in the designating countries and people are prohibited from engaging in any transactions with them.
