AFP, Washington, May 18, 2009 – The United States announced Monday that it is listing Revolutionary Struggle as a foreign terrorist organization after the Greek leftist group attacked US diplomatic and business interests.
The State Department, completing a five-year review of radical groups on April 22, also said it removed another Greek group, Revolutionary Nuclei (RN), from a US blacklist, but continued to treat November 17 as a terrorist group.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton designated Revolutionary Struggle (RS) as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO) under section 219 of the US Immigration and Nationality Act, the State Department said in a statement.
’RS is a Greek terrorist organization responsible for numerous terrorist acts against Greek, US and other targets since 2003,’ according to the statement.
It cited a rocket-propelled grenade attack on the US embassy in Athens in 2007 as well as the detonation of a bomb outside a Citibank branch in the Greek capital on March 9 this year.
It said the chief US diplomat took the action in consultation with Attorney General Eric Holder and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.
At the same time, Clinton ’revoked the FTO designation of the Revolutionary Nuclei,’ it said.
’The secretary concluded that the circumstances that were the basis for the prior designation of RN as an FTO have changed in such a manner to warrant revocation of the FTO designation,’ it said without elaborating.
But the chief US diplomat ’maintained the FTO designation of Revolutionary Organization 17 November,’ a radical leftist group.
Putting such groups on the US blacklist leads to a ban on financial and other support for them as well as a freeze on all their property and property interests in the United States or areas under US jurisdiction.