The US is set to take the Syrian Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) off its list of foreign terrorist organisations on Tuesday, according to a state department memo. The group led a rebel offensive in December that toppled the Assad regime,

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, was previously al-Qaeda’s Syria branch, or Nusra Front. The memo dated June 23 from U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was published in a preview of the Federal Register before official publication on Tuesday.

The State Department is poised to officially drop its terrorist designation for Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Islamist group that toppled the Assad regime and whose leader is now the