DAMASCUS (Dispatches) -- British diplomats have held talks with Abu Muhammad Jolani, leader of the militant group with links to Al-Qaeda that overthrew the Assad government.
Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) is a proscribed terrorist organization in the UK and expressing support for the group is a crime. However, British diplomats were photographed with Jolani, whose real name is Ahmed al-Sharaa, in Damascus on Monday.
This came after Downing Street insisted last week that it could still engage with HTS without violating the government’s anti-terror legislation. 
Jolani met with Stephen Hickey, director of the Middle East department at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), and Ann Snow, the UK’s special representative for Syria.
HTS said the discussions focused on the “latest developments” in Syria. In an interview with The Times, Jolani urged Britain and other countries to lift all sanctions imposed on Syria.
He further called on the occupying regime of Israel to end its air strikes and withdraw from Syrian territory that it took after Assad’s fall.
On Monday, Foreign Secretary David Lammy said the meeting between British diplomats and Jolani “underlies our commitment to Syria”.

It has raised speculation in some quarters that the Labor government may remove HTS from its list of designated terrorist organizations. 
HTS has been a proscribed terrorist organization in Britain since 2017 and is listed by the Home Office as an “alternative name” for Al-Qaeda, the armed group that the West says carried out the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York.
While Prime Minister Keir Starmer said last Monday that it was “far too early” to make a decision on HTS’ status, Cabinet Office minister Pat McFadden said there would be a “relatively swift decision” and the issue “would have to be considered quite quickly”.
Speaking to the BBC, Lammy said: “Al-Qaeda is responsible for a tremendous loss of life on British soil.
“We will judge them [HTS] on their actions. I won’t comment on future proscription, but of course, we recognize that this is an important moment for Syria,” he added.
It remains unlikely that the British government will delist HTS unless Washington takes similar steps first.