WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday ending most US economic sanctions on Syria, following through on a promise he made to the country’s new interim leader.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the move was designed to “promote and support the country’s path to stability and peace.”
The executive order is meant to “end the country’s isolation from the international financial system, setting the stage for global commerce and galvanizing investments from its neighbors in the region, as well as from the United States,” Treasury’s acting under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, Brad Smith, told reporters on a call Monday morning to preview the administration’s action.
Monday’s actions do not rescind sanctions imposed on ousted former President Bashar Assad, his top aides, family members and officials who had been determined to have committed human rights abuses or been involved in drug trafficking or part of Syria’s chemical weapons program. Known as the Caesar Act sanctions, they can only be repealed by law.
The White House posted the text of the order on X after the signing, which was not open to the press.
The US granted Syria sweeping exemptions from sanctions in May, which was a first step toward fulfilling the Republican president’s pledge to lift a half-century of penalties on a country shattered by 13 years of civil war.
Along with the lifting of economic sanctions, Monday’s executive order lifts the national emergency outlined in an executive order issued by former President George W. Bush in response to Syria’s occupation of Lebanon and pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and missile programs, Treasury officials said. Five other previous executive orders related to Syria were also lifted.
Sanctions targeting terrorist groups and manufacturers and sellers of the amphetamine-like stimulant Captagon will remain in place.
Trump met with Syria’s interim leader, Ahmed Al-Sharaa, in Saudi Arabia in May and told him he would lift sanctions and explore normalizing relations in a major policy shift in relations between the US and Syria.
“This is another promise made and promise kept,” Leavitt said Monday.
The European Union has also followed through with lifting nearly all remaining sanctions on Syria.
Still, some restrictions remain in place. The US still designates Syria as a state sponsor of terrorism and the group led by Al-Sharaa as a foreign terrorist organization.
A State Department official said the department is reviewing those designations.
Trump signs an executive order ending US sanctions on Syria
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Trump signs an executive order ending US sanctions on Syria
- White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the move was designed to ‘promote and support the country’s path to stability and peace’
Tanzania opposition says 2,000 killed in election violence
- Opposition party Chadema’s deputy chairperson John Heche said Tanzania witnessed “mass killings of more than 2,000 people and over 5,000 injured in the space of just one week“
- The violence was carried out “with direct involvement of the state“
DAR ES SALAM: Tanzania’s main opposition party on Thursday said more than 2,000 people were killed in a week of election violence, calling for sanctions against officials it accused of crimes against humanity.
President Samia Suluhu Hassan was declared the winner of October 29 polls with 98 percent of the vote, but her government was accused of rigging the polls and overseeing a campaign of murders and abductions of her critics that sparked nationwide protests and riots.
Opposition party Chadema’s deputy chairperson John Heche told reporters that Tanzania witnessed “mass killings of more than 2,000 people and over 5,000 injured in the space of just one week.”
He said the violence was carried out “with direct involvement of the state” and that it amounted to “crimes against humanity.”
Previous opposition counts had put the deaths at more than 1,000. The government has not given a death toll.
Heche urged the international community to “impose sanctions on all individuals involved in planning and executing these acts of criminality and crimes against humanity.”
In a live online broadcast, he said those responsible should be subjected to travel bans, including restrictions on their families.
Heche also said the unrest triggered a surge of people fleeing the country, alongside “the abduction and enforced disappearance of hundreds of civilians.”
Chadema further accused security units of carrying out rapes, torture and “gruesome killings,” and of engaging in widespread looting and arbitrary arrests.
The party urged authorities to return the bodies of those killed so families could bury them.
Authorities have continued to stifle dissent, with planned protests earlier this week seeing empty streets and a significant security presence.
Hassan last week justified the killings, saying it was necessary to prevent the overthrow of the government.
“The force that was used corresponds to the situation at hand,” she said in a speech.
Hassan has formed an inquiry commission into the violence, which the opposition says includes only government loyalists, instead calling for an independent investigation.
