Hezbollah supporters during a ceremony held on Jan. 4 in the southern suburbs of Beirut on the occasion of the second commemoration of the assassination in Iraq of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani. (Credit: Houssam Chbaro)
BEIRUT — The US State Department announced Friday that a law enforcement consortium grouping 30 governments that targets Hezbollah convened for its ninth meeting Wednesday and Thursday.
Here’s what we know:
• The US-Europol Law Enforcement Coordination Group meeting addressed how “law enforcement or financial tools can be used to disrupt Hezbollah terrorist and criminal activities,” including “ongoing global terrorist plotting, weapons procurement, and financial schemes.”
• The LECG was established in 2014 to improve international coordination to counter Hezbollah’s activities, with the current meeting attended by “more than 30 governments – from the Middle East, South America, Central America, Europe, Africa, Indo-Pacific, and North America,” and “officials from the US Departments of State, Justice, Treasury, as well as from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.”
• The US designated Hezbollah a terrorist organization in 1997 and enacted the Hezbollah International Financing Prevention Act in 2014, imposing sanctions on financial actors cooperating with designated Hezbollah members. The US has also imposed sanctions on Hezbollah members and people connected with the party, and placed bounties on potential financiers. The European Union placed the military wing of Hezbollah under the EU sanctions regime to combat terrorism in 2013, while the UK and Germany began regarding the entirety of the group as a terrorist organization in 2019 and 2020, respectively.