Specially Designated Global Terrorist

The US State Department on Monday designated Kashmiri militant leader and Hizb-ul-Mujahideen supreme commander Syed Salahuddin as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) and imposed sanctions on him. Like the Department of the Treasury, the US State Department has authority to designate individuals and entities under Executive Order 13224. Below are all E.O. 13224 listings designated by the Department of State (www.state.gov).

Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) is a designation authorized under US Executive Order 13224. People or entities are designated as "Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGT)s" under Executive Order 13224 by the United States Department of State or the US Department of the Treasury.

SDGTs are entities and individuals who the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) finds have committed or pose a significant risk of committing acts of terrorism, or who OFAC finds provide support, services, or assistance to, or otherwise associate with, terrorists and terrorist organizations designated under OFAC Counter Terrorism Sanctions programs, as well as such persons' subsidiaries, front organizations, agents, or associates.

They are designated under OFAC's programs. The designation SDGT is one of several types of designations of persons to whom one or more OFAC-administered sanctions apply; these include country-specific and counter narcotics trafficking, non-proliferation, and transnational criminal organization-related sanctions, and potentially under sanctions related to illicit trading in rough diamonds, although this had not been applied of early November 2011.

OFAC publishes an integrated list of persons designated under its various sanctions programs that is known as the Specially Designated Nationals List, under which SDGT listings are included. Individuals and companies designated as "Specially Designated Nationals" are known as "SDNs". Most SDGT SDNs are foreign persons, but in at least one case—that of the late Anwar al-Awlaki (also known by various aliases)—an American citizen was designated as an SDGT.

The main regulatory framework underlying the SDGT designation was established two weeks after the September 11 attacks in 2001, through Executive Order 13224, by President George W. Bush, according to wikipedia.org. Once the US declares a person as a global terrorist, its citizens and organisations based in the US are barred from dealing in any financial matters with such person. The US administration also takes steps to immediately block his assets in the United States.