Iraq withdraws terror designation of Hezbollah, Houthi groups

ISTANBUL

Iraq retracted a decision on Thursday to classify Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthis as “terrorist organizations,” saying the listing was “mistakenly” issued.

The official gazette, Al-Waqa’I al-Iraqiya, published a decision from the Committee for Freezing Terrorists’ Funds to designate the two groups as “terrorist organizations” and freeze their assets.

But the committee later issued a statement saying that the decision was based on a request from Malaysia and on UN Security Council Resolution 1373 concerning the freezing of assets belonging to individuals and entities associated with the ISIS (Daesh) and al-Qaeda terror groups.

It said the list “mistakenly” included several parties and groups “that have no terrorist links to either organization,” referring to Hezbollah and Houthis. It added that the document was released before it was fully revised and that the official gazette will be corrected to remove the unrelated entities.

There was no immediate comment from Hezbollah or the Houthis on the Iraqi move.