JIHADIST LEADERS #3: Abu Musab al-Suri

Photos & Details

Name: Mustafa bin Abd al-Qadir Setmariam Nasar aka Abu Musab al-Suri

Date of birth: 26 October 1958

Place of birth: Aleppo, Syria

Role: Ideologist and Strategist

Group affiliation: Uncertain, probable link with al-Qaeda

Ideology: Jihadist, Salafist.

Abu Musab Al-Suri: The architect of global Jihad (* on this quotation see the notes)

The life of Mustafa bin Abd al-Qadir Setmariam Nasar (a.k.a. Abu Musab al-Suri) up to his arrest is well known and will therefore be quickly set out, deferring to the third paragraph for new and exclusive information on what happened to al-Suri after his arrest.

Abu Musab was born in 1958 grew up in Aleppo, Syria, and attended four years of university studies at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Aleppo. In 1980, he joined the Combatant Vanguard organisation, a radical offshoot of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, which was at the forefront of the Islamist uprising in Syria against the government of Hafez Assad between 1976 and 1982. During this time he trained in military camps supervised by the organisation and located in Iraq and Jordan, run by former Syrian, Egyptian and Iraqi army officers. In particular, Al-Suri trained in the use of explosives, urban guerrilla warfare, special operations and military engineering. Because of this training, he was appointed as an officer of the Military High Command, responsible for military training in the Brotherhood camps in Iraq and Jordan and deputy head of north-western Syria during the Hama uprising against al-Assad in 1982.