US Treasury slaps terrorism sanctions on 2 people, 7 entities including Maute Group

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Treasury Department has added two individuals and seven organizations in Africa and Asia connected to Islamic State to its sanctions list for global terrorism, it said on Tuesday.

The Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) said on its website it had added Abu Musab Al-Barnawi of Nigeria and Mahad Moalim of Somalia, and seven groups from Bangladesh, Egypt, the Philippines, Somalia, Nigeria and Tunisia to its sanctions list.

The additions include ISIS-Bangladesh, ISIS-Egypt, ISIS-Philippines, ISIS-Somalia, ISIS-West Africa, Jund al-Khilafah-Tunisia, also known as ISIS-Tunisia, and the Philippines-based Maute Group, also known as Islamic State of Lanao, OFAC said.

The U.S. State Department said in a separate statement that including the latest additions, it had designated 40 Islamic State leaders and operatives dating back to 2011 under an order aimed at denying them access to the U.S. financial system.

"These designations are part of a larger comprehensive plan to defeat ISIS that, in coordination with the 75-member Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, has made significant progress toward that goal," the statement said, using a common abbreviation for Islamic State.

This effort "is destroying ISIS in its safe havens, denying its ability to recruit foreign terrorist fighters, stifling its financial resources, negating the false propaganda it disseminates over the internet and social media, and helping to stabilize liberated areas in Iraq and Syria so the displaced can return to their homes and begin to rebuild their lives," the statement added.

Islamic State fighters were driven last year from all the population centers they occupied in both Syria and Iraq, but Washington still considers them a threat, capable of carrying out an insurgency and plotting attacks elsewhere. — Reuters