Freeze on assets of Afghan Islamist leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar lifted in Turkey

ANKARA

A decision to freeze the assets of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the head of an Afghan Islamist organization, has been lifted in Turkey, following lifting sanctions against him by the United Nations.

The decision was published in the Official Gazette on April 30.

The United Nations lifted sanctions on Feb. 4 against Hekmatyar, the leader of the Hezb-e-Islami group in Afghanistan and one of the most infamous figures in the country’s civil war in the 1990s.

Hezb-e-Islami was created in 1977 by Hekmatyar, who was identified as a “global terrorist” by the United States in 2003.

He was sidelined from Afghan politics after the Taliban rose to power in the late 1990s. 

However, over the last decade, the group is believed to have regained some of its lost strength. It has claimed responsibility for several attacks in the country, most notably an attack on a team of aid workers in the Badakhshan province in 2010 and a car bomb blast that targeted a pair of U.S. military vehicles in 2013. 

Hekmatyar served as the prime minister of Afghanistan for brief periods between 1993 and 1996.