U.S. Names 28 Groups on Its Terrorism List

Trying to stop the flow of money and arms to terrorists, the State Department on Friday renewed a legal ban on any support for 27 foreign terrorist organizations and added a group headed by Saudi exile Osama bin Laden.

At the same time, the department removed Palestinian and Chilean organizations from its formal terrorism list, citing good behavior, and dropped Cambodia’s notorious Khmer Rouge, which the department said “no longer exists as a viable terrorist organization.”

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright added to the list Al Qaida, or the Base, which the State Department says is headed by Bin Laden and is responsible for plots to kill the pope and bomb U.S. airliners, as well as the August 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people.

“They have no place in civilized affairs,” said Albright, referring to the 28 organizations now on the list, which bars their members from the United States, makes it illegal to contribute money or other assistance to them and requires U.S. financial institutions to freeze the groups’ assets.

The decisions are made under a 1996 law aimed at stopping U.S. fund-raising and other support for terrorist groups.

Michael Sheehan, chief counter-terrorism coordinator, acknowledged that the impact may be mostly symbolic in some cases. Al Qaida, for example, receives little funding from within the U.S., but he said the legal designation helps to cut off its support elsewhere.

Bin Laden, a Saudi millionaire businessman believed to be living in Afghanistan, is on the FBI’s list of 10 most-wanted criminals, and the State Department has offered a $5-million reward for his arrest. He and his sympathizers deny that he is a terrorist mastermind. He led anti-Soviet fighters in Afghanistan, and U.S. officials say he directs Al Qaida, which has up to 1,000 Arab fighters.

Removed from the list of terrorist organizations because they have committed no recent terrorist acts were the Manuel Rodriguez Patriotic Front of Chile and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Neither the DFLP nor the Chilean group had plotted or conducted terrorist activity since the list was last reviewed in 1997, officials said.