Abu Musab Al-Suri

Abu Musab al-Suri ( ar, أبو مصعب السوري), born Mustafa bin Abd al-Qadir Setmariam Nasar ( ar, مصطفى بن عبد القادر ست مريم نصار), is a suspected Al-Qaeda member and writer best known for his 1,600-page book ''The Global Islamic Resistance Call'' (''Da'wat al-muqawamah al-islamiyyah al-'alamiyyah''). He has held Spanish citizenship since the late 1980s following marriage to a Spanish woman. He is wanted in Spain for the 1985 El Descanso bombing, which killed eighteen people in a restaurant in Madrid, and (as a witness) in connection with the 2004 Madrid train bombings. He is considered by many as 'the most articulate exponent of the modern jihad and its most sophisticated strategist'.

Nasar was captured by Pakistani security forces in 2005 and was rendered to Syria, where he was also a wanted man. As of April 2014, he was being held in a Syrian prison.

Life

Nasar's full name is Mustafa bin Abd al-Qadir al-Rifa'i ( ar, مصطفى بن عبد القادر الرفاعي); he is a descendant of Ahmed al-Rifa'i, who is the founder of the Rifa'i Sufi order, and his paternal great grandmother was Set Mariam ( ar, ست مريم, meaning Lady Mariam). His mother is the daughter of Mohammed Nasar, an Egyptian who came to Syria with Ibrahim Pasha's campaigns against the Ottoman Empire.

Nasar was born and grew up in Aleppo in Syria, and attended four years of university studies there at the University of Aleppo's Department of Mechanical Engineering. In 1980, he joined the Combatant Vanguard organisation, a radical offshoot of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, which was at the forefront in the Islamist uprising in Syria against Hafez Assad's government. Nasar was forced to flee Syria at the end of 1980. He then joined the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood organisation in exile, receiving training at their bases and safe houses in Iraq and Jordan. He is reported to have participated in the uprising of Hama in 1982. He emigrated to France and later to Spain in the mid-1980s.

In 1987, Nasar and a small group of Syrian friends left Spain for Peshawar, where they met Abdallah Azzam, the godfather of the Arab-Afghan movement. Nasar was enlisted as a military trainer at the camps for Arab volunteer fighters, and he also fought at the frontlines against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and the communist government in Kabul after the Soviet withdrawal in 1988.

Nasar met Osama bin Laden in Peshawar and claims to have been a member of his inner circle and working for bin Laden until sometime around 1992, when Nasar returned to Spain.The Master Plan: For the new theorists of jihad, Al Qaeda is just the beginning
Lawrence Wright, ''The New Yorker'', 11 September 2006.
In Peshawar, Nasar became well known under his pen name Umar Abd al-Hakim after he published a 900-page treatise in May 1991, entitled 'The Islamic jihadi revolution in Syria', also known as 'the Syrian Experience' (''al-tajrubah al-suriyyah''). The treatise was a vehement attack on the Muslim Brotherhood and constituted an important part of the intellectual foundation for al-Qaida and the jihadi current during the 1990s.

From 1985 to 1995, Nasar adopted Spain as his primary place of residence, even though he traveled extensively and spent much time in Afghanistan. In Spain, he married Elena Moreno in 1987/88, who converted to Islam. This marriage allowed him to become a Spanish citizen. They have four children.

Among his associates was Imad Eddin Yarkas alias Abu Dahdah, head of al-Qaeda's Madrid cell, who was arrested in November 2001 on suspicion of membership in al-Qaida and of involvement in the 11 September 2001 attacks. He was later acquitted of charges of assisting the 9/11 plotters, but convicted of membership in a terrorist organization.

Nasar first moved to London in 1994, and brought his family along in mid-1995. It is possible that he fled Spain because of suspicions he was involved in the 1995 Islamist terror bombings in France. For a while, Nasar edited ''al-Ansar'', the most important jihadi magazine at the time, with ties to the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA). Nasar left the journal in 1996, partly due to disagreements with the new GIA leadership in Algeria and partly as a result of a conflict with its chief editor, Umar Mahmud Uthman Abu Umar, better known as Abu Qatada al-Filastini. The latter is widely regarded as al-Qaeda's principal cleric in Europe.

In 1997, Nasar established a media company called Islamic Conflict Studies Bureau with Mohamed Bahaiah. Through this office, he facilitated two important media events for bin Laden in Afghanistan, in particular Peter Bergen's famous CNN interview with bin Laden in March 1997.Bergen, Peter. "The Osama bin Laden I Know", 2006 In fact, he served in the days before 9/11 as the facilitator who took Western reporters to meet with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.wsj.com: "The New Mastermind of Jihad"
6 April 2012

In the autumn of 1997, Nasar left London for Afghanistan, operating initially as a lecturer and trainer in the Arab-Afghan camps and guesthouses. He settled there with his family in 1998. In 1999, he formed a media and research center in Kabul and in 2000, he was allowed to open his own training camp, the al-Ghuraba Camp, located in Kargha, near Kabul. Nasar's camp was formally part of the Taliban's Ministry of Defense, and separate from al-Qaida and bin Laden's organization, whom he had fallen out with in 1998. In a seven-page letter from mid-1998, Nasar launched scathing criticism of bin Laden for the disdain al-Qaeda had shown towards the Taliban leadership of Afghanistan, including Mullah Omar. He is also highly critical of their strategies, and has denounced al-Qaeda's 1998 attacks on the US embassies in East Africa and the 11 September attack on New York's Twin Towers, which he argues put a catastrophic end to the jihadi cause.

On 19 January 2009, FBI interrogator Robert Fuller testified during a hearing before Canadian Omar Khadr's Guantanamo military commission that during interrogations in October 2002, Khadr confessed to staying at a Kabul guest house run by "Abu Musab al-Suri".

In September 2003, Spanish magistrate Baltasar Garzon indicted 35 members of the Madrid cell for their role in the 11 September attacks, including Nasar. In November 2004, the United States Department of State named Nasar a Most Wanted Terrorist and offered a reward of US$5 million for information about his location.

Reports of detention

Nasar was reportedly captured in the Pakistani city of Quetta in late October 2005, although exactly where and when is disputed. He was handed over into American custody a month or so after his capture; however, he was not among the 14 high-profile al-Qaeda suspects transferred to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in late 2006, and there were persistent reports that he was one of the ghost prisoner

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