One of the historic jihadist leaders of Syria's last rebel stronghold, Abu Maria al-Qahtani, co-founder of the Al-Nusra Front, was killed in a suicide attack, his organization and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights announced on Friday April 5. Man (OSDH). The Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group of which he was a member, in command in the rebel region of Idlib (northwest), blamed the assassination on the competing jihadist group Islamic State (IS). Al-Qahtani
“was martyred in a cowardly attack carried out by an IS member equipped with an explosive belt”
in Sarmada, north of Idlib, the HTS news site Amjad said. The OSDH, an NGO which has a vast network of sources in Syria, confirmed this attack, without commenting on its origin. The attack has not been claimed at this stage. Two people who accompanied al-Qahtani were seriously injured in the explosion, according to the OSDH.
Al-Qahtani was released on March 7 from prison, where he had spent seven months for “treason,” before being cleared by the HTS and released. Born in 1976 in Iraq, Al-Qahtani, whose real name is Maysar Ali Musa Abdallah al-Juburi, has been on the list of people sanctioned by the United States since 2012 for his links with the Al-Qaeda group, including the Al Front. -Nusra, later HTS, was the emanation in Syria. He had also been on the sanctions list of the United Nations Security Council since 2014, according to which he had
“left Mosul
(Iraq)
to join Syria in 2011”
in order
to “bring the ideology of Al-Qaeda”
into this country. In 2012, he became
“the main religious and military commander of the Al-Nusra Front in eastern Syria and also headed a training camp for the network
,” according to this source. Considered a member of the “moderate” wing of the Al-Nusra Front, he subsequently called for it to break with Al-Qaeda.