Syrian regime includes Turkey's Erdogan, Lebanon's Saad Hariri in new sanctions list

Syria's Assad regime has added hundreds of people and organisations onto the country's sanctions list, including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The sanctions list, which was updated on 11 July, added 597 people and 195 organisations, claiming that they were involved in financing "terrorist" activity or money laundering.

This includes Erdogan, as well as Turkish former Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and a number of high-profile individuals from the Middle East including former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri and former leader of Lebanon's Progressive Socialist Party Walid Jumblatt.

The individuals were included as part of Decision No.3 from the Committee for Freezing the Funds of Individuals and Entities (CFFIE), which updated the Syria's "terrorism list" first issued in 2017.

According to The Syria Report, out of the 597 people on the list 325 are Syrian nationals. There are also 69 Saudis, 42 Lebanese, 32 Kuwaitis, eight Bahraini's, five Qataris and five Yemenis.

The 195 entities consist of a mixture of political parties, financial companies, and organisations within Syria and from the rest of the world.

The CFFIE was established in 2011 as part of anti-money laundering legislation.

The addition of Erdogan onto the Syrian regime's sanctions list comes despite his government's attempts at rapprochement with Assad.

The Syrian regime has itself been sanctioned by many countries after it violently cracked down on peaceful protests beginning in 2011 and committing atrocities against civilians in the ensuing conflict, killing hundreds of thousands of people

Sanctions by the UN, the EU, the UK and the US, have targeted high profile regime officials over war crimes against civilians and involvement in the Captagon trade.