The United States has added the head of an Iran-backed Iraqi militia responsible for attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq to its terrorism blacklist. Ahmad al-Hamidawi, the secretary-general of Kataib Hezbollah was added to the terrorism blacklist by the US State Department and Treasury.
The designation means any assets al-Hamidawi may have in U.S. jurisdictions are frozen and Americans are barred from doing business with him. Kataib Hezbollah was responsible for a late December rocket attack on a military base in Kirkuk that killed a U.S. contractor, prompting an American response.
The attack triggered a series of activities among them protests at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, followed January 3 by a U.S. airstrike that killed Iran’s most powerful military officer, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a leader of the Iran-backed militias in Iraq, of which Kataib Hezbollah is a member.
Kataib Hezbollah has been designated a foreign terrorist organization (FTO) by the State Department since 2009.
