The Biden administration said Friday it has decided not to pursue a $10 million reward it had offered for the capture of Ahmad al-Sharaa, whose group led fighters that ousted Syrian President Bashar Assad earlier this month.
The announcement followed a meeting in Damascus between al-Sharaa and the top US diplomat for the Middle East, Barbara Leaf, who led the first US diplomatic delegation into Syria since Assad’s ouster.
Al-Sharaa's Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, remains designated a foreign terrorist organization, and Leaf would not say if sanctions stemming from that designation would be eased.
However, she told reporters that Sharaa had committed to renouncing terrorism and as a result the US would no longer offer the reward.
Leaf said the US would make policy decisions based on actions and not words.
"It was a good first meeting. We will judge by the deeds, not just by words," Leaf said in a briefing and added that the US officials reiterated that Syria's new government should be inclusive. It should also ensure that terrorist groups cannot pose a threat, she said.
"Ahmed al-Sharaa committed to this," Leaf said. "So, based on our discussion, I told him we would not be pursuing rewards for justice," she said, referring to a $10 million bounty that US had put on the HTS leader's head.
The US delegation also worked to uncover new information about US journalist Austin Tice, who was taken captive during a reporting trip to Syria in 2012, and other American citizens who went missing under Assad.
US Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs Roger Carstens, who was part of the delegation, said Washington would work with Syria's interim authorities to find Tice.
Carstens, who has been in the region since Assad's fall, said he has received a lot of information about Tice, but none of it had so far confirmed his fate one way or another.
