Russian FSB reports foiling of “terror attacks by HTS, Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham” in Simferopol, Crimea with bombs. Two Russian citizens detained.
According to FSB, suspects planned: to attack a school, then leave to a non-occupied part of Ukraine, later to Turkey, and finally to Syria.
Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham is a group based in Idlib, Syria. Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, commonly referred to as Tahrir al-Sham, is an active Sunni Islamist militant group involved in the Syrian Civil War. It was formed on 28 January 2017 as a merger between Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, the Ansar al-Din Front, Jaysh al-Sunna, Liwa al-Haqq, and the Nour al-Din al-Zenki Movement.
Iran’s government has in 2017 accused Qatar and Saudi Arabia of supporting Tahrir al-Sham.In 2018, Turkey designated Tahrir al-Sham as a terrorist organization and the Al-Nusra Front in 2014. The Turkish government once said it was opposed to Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), and had fought with it and declared it a terrorist organisation, and HTS’s Syrian Salvation Government was a direct challenge to the Turkish-backed Syrian Interim Government.
However, since 2017 there have been times HTS, and in particular its pragmatic faction around Abu Muhammed al-Jolani, has fought alongside the SNA which is backed and funded by Turkey, has not stopped Turkey from setting up several observation posts in its controlled territory in Idlib Governorate, and has joined joint operations rooms with Turkish-backed groups while preserving its autonomy. The Clingendael Institute in November 2019 has described the Turkish policy since 2018 as attempting to divide the pragmatic elements from the dogmatic terrorist elements within HTS.
