The U.S. State Department designations included affiliates of the IS along with linked groups of the IS that are operating in both Algeria and Indonesia.
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The administration’s targeting of diverse extremists who have only nominal or self-declared ties to Islamic State, which is based in Iraq and Syria, suggests that US counterterrorism officials have shifted their appraisal of the terror group’s global reach.
One of the individuals, British citizen Sally Jones, had traveled to Syria to fight with Islamic State alongside her husband, hacker Junaid Hussein, the State Department said.
The State Department designated 10 individuals and five groups as foreign terrorist fighters, including citizens of France, Britain, a designation that imposes sanctions and penalties on terrorists, it said in a statement.
(New throughout, adds details, comments, background) By David Alexander WASHINGTON, Sept 29 (Reuters) – The United States tightened financial pressure on Islamic State on Tuesday, slapping sanctions on more than 30 leaders, supporters and affiliates around the world to squeeze the militant group Washington is having trouble defeating. Earlier this year, officials debated whether the so-called regional “branches” of the Islamic State should really be considered part and parcel of the main network.
The State Department also designated as terrorists three French nationals and a Russian.
The announcement comes as dozens of worldwide leaders gather Tuesday for a summit focusing on the IS threat, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly meeting.
The financial sanctions are created to make it harder for the Islamic State to use its enormous wealth, Daniel Glaser, Treasury’s assistant secretary for terrorist financing, said in an interview.
The officials spoke at length about cutting off the group’s access to the global financial system, saying IS is now taking in as much as $500 million per year from oil revenue, or nearly $1.4 million per day.
Among those sanctioned: Muwaffaq Mustafa Muhammad al-Karmush, who has been described as something like a finance minister for the Islamic State, with responsibility for paying salaries to ISIS fighters.
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In November 2013, al-Rumaysh sent a group of Yemeni extremists to Turkey, Treasury said, and they made their way to an AQAP facilitator in Syria.
