U.S. targets al Qaeda support in Somalia, Iraq

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Treasury on Thursday announced new anti-terrorism sanctions against leaders of an al Qaeda-linked insurgency group in Somalia and a convicted German financier of al Qaeda in Iraq.

The moves ban Americans from dealing with the designated individuals and seek to freeze any assets they may have under U.S. jurisdiction.

The separate financial actions were taken under a U.S. executive order that targets terrorists and those providing support to them, the Treasury said.

In Somalia, the Treasury blacklisted three leaders of al Shabaab, which it called a "violent and brutal extremist group that uses lethal tactics" to undermine civil society.

"These terrorist commanders have had direct involvement in the kidnappings and cold-blooded murders of numerous Somali officials and civilians and they should be cut off from the world's financial system," said Adam Szubin, who heads the Treasury's sanctions arm, the Office of Foreign Assets Control.

A Treasury spokesman said there was no immediately apparent connection between al Shabaab and the coastal pirate groups responsible for rampant attacks on shipping off the Somali coast.

The Treasury said the al Shabaab leaders designated were Ahmed Abdi Aw-Mohamed, 31, who it said claimed the group's responsibility for the May 2007 assassination of a judge; Issa Osman Issa, 35, who it said led a militia assault against Mogadishu's Basil Hotel in April 2007, and Mukhtar Robow, 39, the al Shabaab spokesman and a military commander.

The Treasury also said it targeted German citizen Redouane El Habhab, 38, for providing financial support and other services to al Qaeda in Iraq.

El Habhab was convicted in January by the Schleswig-Holstein Higher Regional Court in Germany for providing support to a foreign terrorist organization and was sentenced to a five-year, nine-month prison term.

The Treasury said he has facilitated payments to al Qaeda in Iraq and has facilitated the smuggling of "violence prone activists" into Iraq.

(Reporting by David Lawder, editing by Vicki Allen)