Syria: One of the most wanted terrorists killed in a suicide attack in Idlib

The prominent leader of the Haya’t Tahrir al Sham (formerly known as al Nusra front) Abu Maria al Qahtani killed in a suicide bombing in an area under the faction’s control in northeastern Syria.

Abu Maria al Qahtani, an Iraqi national, whose real name was Maysar al Jubouri, died from serious wounds he suffered as a result of a suicide bombing in his guesthouse in the town of Sarmada, Idlib.

Qahtani is considered one of the first-ranking leaders of the HTS, and he was arrested for 7 months before he was released.

After HTS released Qahtani from its prisons last March, following a months-long detention for conflicting reasons, including working or preparing a coup against HTS leader, Abo Mouhammad al Julani, Qahtani took one of the guesthouses in the Sarmada area, north of Idlib, as a place to receive his well-wishers, most of whom were tribal sheikhs who they are related to the aforementioned leader.

According to reports, three people entered the guesthouse with a sword to present it to Qahtani, and when the people decided to leave, one of them approached him, while the other two people left quickly, and as the third person approached Qahtani, he blew himself up.

Abu Maria al Qahtani, was an Iraqi national, born in 1976.

After the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Qahtani joined the Iraqi police and worked in the Nineveh Security Directorate, but he soon left his job to join a jihadist group led by Muhammad Khalaf Shakara (Abu Talha al Ansari), which is one of the groups from which the Jordanian Abu Musab al Zarqawi, Jama’ah al Tawhid wal-Jihad.

With Zarqawi declaring his loyalty to Osama bin Laden in 2004, and the transformation of the Tawhid and Jihad group into the al Qaeda organization in Levant, Qahtani was then known among the organization’s fighters as Abu Hamza, Abu Musab, and al Shammari, before he settled on The title of “The Stranger, the Immigrant al Qahtani”.

Later, he went to Syria and joined Abo Mohammad al Julani, who founded back then al Nusra Front.

There is conflicting information however, about when Qahtani moved from Iraq to Syria, following disputes with the Islamic State of Iraq organization.

Some sources confirm that he went to Syria in 2009 to work in a grocery store, and some indicate that he went to Syrian territories after the start of the Arab Spring revolutions.

After heading to Syria, Qahtani remained in contact with jihadist leaders in Iraq, and tried to persuade religious and tribal leaders close to ISIS to defect from the organization or depose its then-emir, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, under the pretext of his wrong policies and widespread violations, and to establish a new jihadist alternative, which prompted leaders in the organization.

He was accused of treason, and called him a “traitorous grocer”.

Among the most prominent stations of Qahtani during that period:

Contributing to the establishment the “al Nusra Front,” after receiving Julani, who was affiliated with the leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, to establish a branch of the organization in Syria.

Qahtani served as the general Shari’a in al Nusra Front, and he assumed the emirate of the eastern region of Syria in Nusra Front (Deir al Zour – Raqqa – Hasakah).

In 2014, al Julani, his companion, Qahtani, was dismissed from the position of General Shari’a in al Nusra Front, and Jordanian Sami al Uraydi was appointed in his place.

However, the dismissal decision didn’t affect the relationship between the two individuals, as Qahtani continued his work within the organization’s Shura Council.