The U.S. on Thursday added a South Asian branch of al Qaeda to its list of foreign terror organizations, and placed sanctions on its leader.

The U.S. State Department said in a statement that al Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri announced the formation of al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent in a video address in 2014, and the group has claimed responsibility for, among other things, an attack on a naval dockyard in Karachi, Pakistan, and the murders of activists and writers in Bangladesh. The group is led by Asim Umar, who the U.S. targeted with sanctions; he used to be a member of Harakat ul-Mujihadeen, another U.S.-listed foreign terror group, the State Department said.

Separately, the U.S. Treasury Department Thursday removed sanctions on businessmen Ahmed Nur Ali Jim’ale and Ali Ghaleb Himmat. Mr. Jim’ale was  a prominent businessman and figure in the al-Shabaab charcoal-sugar trading cycle who benefited from connections with the Somali group, according to a removal notice from the United Nations when it lifted sanctions off him in 2014. The U.N. lifted sanctions on Mr. Himmat in 2009. A Treasury spokeswoman said Thursday that both men submitted requests for reconsideration, and following a review, the circumstances for each designation no longer applied.

Treasury also removed sanctions on a man named Mohammed Daki, who was the subject of a 2005 Washington Post profile in which he insisted he wasn’t a terrorist. The U.N.removed sanctions on him in 2013 after receiving a request from him through its ombudsman office.

Write to Samuel Rubenfeld at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @srubenfeld.