Turkey adds ISIL spokesman and five others to al-Qaeda sanctions list

The Turkish government has added six individuals to its blacklist, including the spokesperson of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in line with a U.N. decision updating the al-Qaeda Sanctions Committee’s list of individuals and entities subject to sanctions.

The related decision by the Cabinet went into force after being published in the Aug. 24 edition of the Official Gazette. Accordingly, a decision dated Sept. 30, 2013, concerning the seizure of assets of persons and legal entities that have been listed by the U.N. Security Council resolutions was updated, with the six individuals being added.

In line with the U.N. Security Council’s decision made on Aug. 15, the six people will be subject to an international travel ban, asset freeze and arms embargo. They include ISIL spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, an Iraqi described by U.N. experts as one of the group’s “most influential emirs” and close to its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

The U.N. resolution also blacklisted Said Arif, a former Algerian army officer who escaped house arrest in France in 2013 and joined the al-Nusra Front in Syria, and Abdul Mohsen Abdallah Ibrahim al-Charekh of Saudi Arabia, dubbed “a leading terrorist Internet propagandist” who heads the group in Syria’s Latakia district.

Hamid Hamad Hamid al-Ali and Hajjaj bin Fahd al-Ajmi, both from Kuwait, were sanctioned for allegedly providing financial support to the al-Nusra Front – Ajmi’s fundraising includes at least one Twitter campaign, according to UN experts – while Abdelrahman Mouhamad Zafir al-Dabidi al-Jahani of Saudi Arabia was named because he runs al-Nusra Front’s foreign fighter networks.

The Aug. 15 resolution that aims...