Recent Appearances...

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Recent Appearances...

Africa Subsaharan

An Islamist group used child soldiers in Mozambique attacks - HRW

2024-05-17

[AFRICANEWS] An Islamist group operating in Mozambique's northern Cabo Delgado province used boys as young as 13 in attacks on a town last week and residents who were forced to flee the fighting recognized some of the child soldiers as their missing relatives, advocacy group Human Rights Watch said Wednesday.

Al-Shabaab
... Somalia's version of the Taliban, functioning as an arm of al-Qaeda...
, which is affiliated to the Islamic State

...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems....
group, has previously been accused by UN agencies of kidnapping children and using them as soldiers in its insurgency in the region, which began in 2017. A surge of attacks by turbans in March left at least 70 children missing, according to local authorities and a group of aid agencies.

Witnesses told the rights group that dozens of child soldiers were used in the attacks and were seen carrying AK-style assault rifles and ammunition belts. Two people from the same family said they recognized their 13-year-old nephew among the children.

"I saw him with my own eyes," Abu Rachide, a resident of the town, told Human Rights Watch. He said the boy waved at him but marched on. Rachide's sister said the boy, who went missing earlier in the year, appeared to be taking instructions from older fighters.

"I kept wondering how he became a fighter like that in just four months," she told HRW.

The latest attacks on the town of Macomia began Friday and continued until the next day. Islamist fighters looted shops and warehouses for food and exchanged fire with Mozambican and South African soldiers before retreating, HRW and Mozambican media reports said.

At least 10 people, mostly soldiers, were reportedly killed in the latest fighting and about 700 residents fled to nearby forests to escape the attacks, according to the HRW report.

Recruiting children under the age of 15 as soldiers is a war crime under international law. In February judges at the International Criminal Court granted reparations of more than 52 million euros ($56 million) to thousands of victims of a convicted commander of a Ugandan rebel group, which included former child soldiers.

The attacks in Mozambique came days before the nonprofit Environmental Investigation Agency, which investigates environmental crimes, published a multi-year investigation alleging that millions of tons of timber had been exported illegally from Cabo Delgado to China since 2017 and the profits had been used to finance the insurgency.

The EIA said Tuesday that its investigation found that Chinese traders purchase "conflict timber" from turbans in Cabo Delgado "and export it alongside other wood" in violation of Mozambique's log export ban.

South Africa deployed soldiers to Cabo Delgado as part of a regional force to stem the insurgency, which began in 2017. In 2020, Islamist fighters beheaded dozens of people, many of them children, as the violence spiraled. After a period of relative inactivity, the turbans launched a new wave of attacks this year.

The regional troops announced that they had begun withdrawing from their positions ahead of a July deadline, although soldiers from Rwanda are expected to remain under a separate bilateral deal with Mozambique.

Aid agencies say the conflict forced more than a million people to flee their homes since it started in October 2017 and thousands have been killed. The insurgency also threatens a $20 billion natural gas project in Cabo Delgado.

Link

Britain

Two men accused in UK of plotting ISIS-style machine gun terror attack on Jews

2024-05-15

[IsraelTimes] Court told the two planned to gun down Jews in Manchester; chief rabbi says news ‘harrowing’; police say they believe there is ‘no longer a wider risk to the public’

Two men accused of plotting to gun down Jews in an Islamic State

The Daily Mail has photos of Mr. Saadaoui and his home, adding:

This is the 35-year-old terror suspect arrested over a failure to disclose an alleged Isis-inspired plot to murder Jewish people in a machine gun attack.

Bilel Saadaoui has appeared in court alongside two other men after a series of raids in north-west England.

Saadaoui, from Hindley in Wigan, is charged with failure to disclose information about an act of terrorism after allegedly taking receipt of his brother's will and the key to a safe containing £75,000.

His older brother, Tunisian-born Walid Saadaoui, 36, from Abram in Wigan, was also arrested along with Amar Hussein, 50, and those two have been charged with preparation of terrorist acts.

Walid Saadaoui and Hussein had 'intended causing multiple fatalities using automatic weapons' while also targeting 'law enforcement and military', it was alleged.

Link

Iraq

Top Iraqi commander killed in ‘terrorist’ attack: Defense ministry

2024-05-15

[Rudaw] A top Iraqi army commander and several soldiers were killed in a "terrorist" attack in the Salahaddin province, the Iraqi defense ministry announced on Monday.

The Iraqi defense ministry announced in a statement colonel Khalid Naji Wassak and several other soldiers were killed "as a result of their repelling of a terrorist attack within their operational area."

Wassak was the commander of the second battalion of the 93rd Infantry Brigade of the Iraqi army that operated in the Salahaddin province, where Islamic State

I somehow managed to miss that last point until now, but I’m still only a very junior analyst-in-training

Link

Africa North

Senior Islamic State group commander killed in an operation by Malian state forces, the country's military said.

2024-05-01

[AFRICANEWS] A senior Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems....
group commander wanted in connection with the deaths of US forces in Niger was killed in an operation by Malian state forces, the country's military said.

Abu Huzeifa , known under the pseudonym Higgo , was a commander in the group known as the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara
...the succulent fruit of the union of splinter factions from Mokhtar Bekmokhtar's al-Mourabitunes and MUJAO. Once the dust had settled and the smell of gunsmoke had dissipated, they became the Islamic State in Mali, then adopted their present clever name. They are headed by Adnan Abu Walid Saharaoui. It operates along the borders of Burkina Faso, Niger, and Mali...
The US State Department had announced a reward of up to $5 million for information concerning him.

Huzeifa is suspected of helping lead a 2017 attack on U.S. and Nigerien forces in Tongo Tongo , Niger , that resulted in the deaths of four Americans and four Nigerien soldiers. Following this attack, the American army reduced its operations with its local partners in the Sahel.

"The identification and evidence collected confirm the death of Abu Huzeifa known as Higgo, a renowned foreign terrorist ," the Malian army said in a statement late Monday.

Moussa Ag Acharatoumane , leader of a Tuareg gang allied with the state, said his forces participated in the operation and that it took place in northern Mali .

A photo of Huzeifa broadcast by state television
... and if you can't believe state television who can you believe?
shows him in military fatigues, with a long black beard and a machine gun in his hand.

Mali has experienced two coups since 2020 during a wave of political instability that has swept West and Central Africa. The country has been battling an increasingly serious insurgency led by jihadist groups linked to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group for more than a decade .

The killing of the Islamic State group's commander over the weekend "could mean less violence against civilians in the region, but the threat remains high as there are certainly leaders with similar brutality ready to take control and to prove themselves," said Rida Lyammouri of the Policy Center for the New South, a Morocco-based think tank.

Colonel Assimi Goita , who took power after the second coup of 2021, has promised to end the insurgency. The ruling junta cut military ties with La Belle France due to growing frustration at the lack of progress after a decade of assistance, and turned to Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group for support in security matters.

Mali has also formed a security alliance with Niger and Burkina Faso

...The country in west Africa that they put where Upper Volta used to be. Its capital is Oogadooga, or something like that. Its president used to be Blaise Compaoré, who took office in 1987 and was chased out in 2014. Now it's the usual army officer type guy, Captain Ibrahim Traore, running things, who's just doing a bang-up job unless he's already been deposed...
, which are also battling increasingly serious insurgencies and have also experienced coups in recent years. Although their armies promised to end insurgencies after deposing their respective elected governments, conflict analysts say violence has instead worsened under their regimes. The three countries share borders in the conflict-hit Sahel region
... North Africa's answer to the Pak tribal areas...
, and their security forces are overwhelmed in the fight against jihadist violence.

Link

Europe

Dutch intelligence: Europe foiled 10 jihadist attacks in 2023, Gaza war among triggers

2024-04-24

[IsraelTimes] ’The terrorist threat is serious at this moment,’ agency head says

Western intelligence prevented at least 10 jihadist attacks across Europa
...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum...
last year, and the current Israel-Hamas
Hamas

...a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth",...
war has increased the threat of further attacks, Dutch intelligence agency AIVD said on Tuesday.

The foiled attacks included a plan to stab people at random and preparations for an assault on specific buildings and events, the AIVD said in its annual report, without elaborating.

"There were two mobilizing issues: The destruction of Korans in the Netherlands and other European countries and the conflict between Israel and Hamas," the Dutch agency said.

"The terrorist threat is serious at this moment," the agency’s director-general, Erik Akerboom, said.

Akerboom said he is particularly concerned about big events, noting that the agency is working closely with French authorities to prevent incidents during the Gay Paree Olympics this summer.

Earlier this month, four teenagers were arrested in Germany for suspected planning of Islamist terror attacks on churches and synagogues.

Sweden raised its terror alert in August to the second-highest level, after Koran burning
...One of the basic tenets of Islam is that once a Koran has been printed it is expected to last for all time, no matter how old, ratty, and smelly other, lesser holy books may become. Should it actually become necessary to put a Koran out of its misery there is a ritual that includes extensive charivari, featuring long drawn-wailing and head bonking, ritual wife beating, and the sacrifice of dozens of women's noses and pubic lips. When the actual disposal has been completed there is a prescribed period of celebratory gun sex with the expectation of a minimum of two hundred casualties. Should actual infidels dispose of a Koran, Islamic custom calls for three weeks of rioting and a minimum of three dozen dead, which is a holdover from the days of Moloch worship....
s and other acts in the country targeting the holy book of Islam outraged Moslems and triggered threats from jihadists.

In October, two Swedish soccer fans were rubbed out in Brussels, allegedly by a man who identified himself as a member of the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems....
jihadist group.

Also in October, a 20-year-old man fatally stabbed a teacher and gravely maimed two other people in an attack at a school in the northern French city of Arras, in what French President Emmanuel Macron condemned as "barbaric Islamic terrorism."

The AIVD did not say how many of the foiled jihadist attacks had occurred since October 7.

In December, the Dutch counterterrorism agency increased the country’s threat alert to its second-highest level because of concerns about the Islamic State group’s Khorasan affiliates, Akerboom said. IS-K, a Central Asian affiliate, was responsible for the attack at a suburban Moscow concert hall that killed at least 133 people in March.

According to the new report, "global jihadism has been the greatest terrorist threat for years in the Netherlands." Incidents such as the one last April, when an anti-Islam activist tore pages from the Koran in front of the Dutch parliament building, put the Netherlands on the map of targets.

Link

Africa North

Mali: More than 110 civilians kidnapped by ''suspected jihadists''

2024-04-23

[AFRICANEWS] Local groups and an official in Mali are calling for the release of more than 110 people kidnapped by suspected jihadists some 6 days ago.

They told the AFP news agency that three buses carrying the civilians were stopped by the group of men in the centre of the country and forced to head towards a forest between Bandiagara and Bankass.

An elected official from Bandiagara, who asked to remain anonymous for security reasons, says the buses and passengers are still being held captive.

Since 2012, Mali has been plagued by fighting between different factions affiliated to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems....
group, as well as by self-declared, self-defence forces and bandidos.

The worsening security situation has been compounded by a humanitarian and political crisis.

The violence spilled over into neighbouring Burkina Faso

Link

Syria-Lebanon-Iran

SDF capture 38 ISIS suspects

2024-04-21

[Rudaw] The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on Saturday announced the capture of 38 suspected members of the Islamic State

Link

Europe

Germany arrests 4 teens suspected of planning Islamist terror attacks

2024-04-13

[IsraelTimes] Teens’ plans allegedly included Molotov cocktail and knife attacks against synagogues and churches in the name of the Islamic State

Four teenagers suspected of planning Islamist terror attacks have been arrested in Germany, authorities said on Friday, with churches or synagogues as possible targets.

Three of the suspects — two girls who are 15 and 16, and a 15-year-old boy — come from various parts of the western North Rhine-Westphalia state, Germany’s most populous. They were arrested after a court issued warrants for them over the Easter weekend, prosecutors in the city of Duesseldorf said.

Separately, prosecutors in Stuttgart said a 16-year-old suspect is in jug on "suspicion that he was preparing a serious crime endangering the state."

The three detained in western Germany are suspected of having declared themselves prepared to carry out an "Islamist-motivated terror attack" and planning such an attack, prosecutors said in a statement. They didn’t specify how advanced the plans were, and said they couldn’t give further details because of the suspects’ young age and the ongoing investigation.

They are in detention pending possible charges of declaring themselves ready to commit murder and manslaughter and preparing a serious act of violence.

North Rhine-Westphalia’s top security official, state Interior Minister Herbert Reul, said the investigation was prompted by the 16-year-old girl’s suspected plans to leave Germany to join the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They"re really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they"re not really Moslems....
group.

Chats on her cellphone, in which possible attacks in Dortmund, Duesseldorf or Cologne

...the largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia and the fourth populated city in Germany....
were discussed but also churches and synagogues in her hometown of Iserlohn, led Sherlocks to the other suspects, German news agency dpa reported.

The young age of the suspects left Reul "speechless," with the minister adding it posed a "huge challenge for society as a whole."

Citing unidentified security sources, the agency reported that the teenagers hadn’t yet drawn up a concrete attack plan with a time and place.

However,
nothing needs reforming like other people"s bad habits...
Germany’s biggest-selling daily Bild reported that the four youths were allegedly planning to carry out Molotov cocktail and knife attacks in the name of the Islamic State group.

The report added that the suspects were also weighing whether to obtain firearms.

Germany has been on particularly high alert for Islamist attacks since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas
Hamas

...the braying voice of Islamic Resistance®,...
war on October 7. Germany’s domestic intelligence chief warned that the risk of such assaults is "real and higher than it has been for a long time."

The country is also nervous about security breaches as it prepares to host the European soccer championships from mid-June to mid-July.

’DANGER REMAINS ACUTE’
Police had already foiled a suspected plot earlier this year. Investigators in January arrested three people over an alleged plan targeting the cathedral in Cologne on New Year’s Eve. Bild reported that the suspects were Tajiks acting for Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K), the same group believed to have been behind March’s deadly massacre in a Moscow concert hall.

"The danger from Islamist terrorism remains acute," Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said at the time, describing the Khorasan offshoot as "currently the biggest Islamist threat in Germany."

Islamist gunnies have carried out several attacks in Germany in recent years. Two Afghans linked to IS were arrested in Germany in March on suspicion of planning an attack around Sweden’s parliament in retaliation for Koran burning
...One of the basic tenets of Islam is that once a Koran has been printed it is expected to last for all time, no matter how old, ratty, and smelly other, lesser holy books may become. Should it actually become necessary to put a Koran out of its misery there is a ritual that includes extensive charivari, featuring long drawn-wailing and head bonking, ritual wife beating, and the sacrifice of dozens of women"s noses and pubic lips. When the actual disposal has been completed there is a prescribed period of celebratory gun sex with the expectation of a minimum of two hundred casualties. Should actual infidels dispose of a Koran, Islamic custom calls for three weeks of rioting and a minimum of three dozen dead, which is a holdover from the days of Moloch worship....
s.

In October, German prosecutors also charged two Syrian brothers for planning an attack inspired by IS on a church in Sweden.

In December 2022, a Syrian-born Islamist was tossed in the slammer
Don"t shoot, coppers! I"m comin" out!
for 14 years for a knife attack on a train in Bavaria in which four people were maimed.

The number of people considered Islamist gunnies in Germany fell from 28,290 in 2021 to 27,480 in 2022, according to a report from the BfV federal domestic intelligence agency.

However,
nothing needs reforming like other people"s bad habits...
in presenting the report, Faeser said Islamist extremism "remains dangerous."

Link

Europe

Germany detains Iraqi couple suspected of ISIS genocide against Yazidis

2024-04-11

[Rudaw] German authorities detained an Iraqi couple suspected of being members of the Islamic State

...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems....
(ISIS) and accused of enslaving and sexually abusing two young Yazidi girls, prosecutors said on Wednesday.

The suspects, identified only as Twana H.S. and Asia R.A., were married under Islamic law and arrested in Bavaria on Tuesday "on suspicion of genocide, crimes against humanity, as well as membership in the foreign terrorist organization Islamic State," Germany’s Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office said in a blurb.

They are accused of holding a then five-year-old Yazidi girl as a slave and later a then twelve-year-old Yazidi girl as well between October 2015 and December 2017. During that period, "Twana H.S. repeatedly raped both children. To this end, Asia R.A. prepared the room and put make-up on one of the girls."

The victims were further exploited into housework and childcare, were prohibited from practicing their faith, and were forced to partake in Islamic prayers and belief, prosecutors alleged.

In another heinous example of their actions, "Twana H. S. and Asia R. A. applied harsh physical violence to the detriment of the children in case of alleged mistakes. On one occasion, Twana H. S. hit the older girl with a broomstick. Asia R. A. scalded the younger girl’s hand with hot water and repeatedly forced both children to stand on one leg for a half hour each, as a form of punishment," according to the prosecutors.

ISIS swept through vast swathes of Iraq and Syria in 2014 and declared a so-called "caliphate" in a brazen offensive that saw the group take control of around a third of Syria’s territory as well as several Iraqi cities, including the second largest northern city of djinn-infested Mosul
... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn...
. It was declared territorially defeated in 2017 and 2019 in both countries respectively.

During the jihadists’ brutal reign, they committed heinous atrocities, such as genocide, sexual slavery, and massacres against non-Moslems, especially the Yazidi ethnoreligious group. Christians and Shiite Moslems were also a target.

Before the couple left Syria in November 2017, they handed the girls to other ISIS members.

"All of this served the organization’s objective to destroy the Yazidi religion," their statement said.

They are being held in pre-trial detention.

German Justice Minister Marco Buschmann commended the arrests, saying "when it comes to combating forces of Evil and religiously motivated crimes against international law, our justice system has a long arm and lasting power."

More than 6,000 Yazidis were kidnapped when ISIS overran the community’s heartland of Shingal (Sinjar) in 2014. Around 2,700 remain missing, with little done to bring solace to the rescued.

In January 2023, the German parliament recognized the 2014 crimes against the Yazidi community by ISIS as "genocide." Berlin has been an essential member of the US-led global coalition against ISIS.

On Sunday, a German MP from the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party told Rudaw that Berlin has not done enough to prosecute what he said was over 5,000 suspected "war criminals" from Iraq and Syria, mostly ISIS members, who entered the country since 2014.

Germany frequently prosecutes those who committed serious crimes abroad, such as crimes against humanity, on the legal principle of "universal jurisdiction," giving Berlin the green light to prosecute international crimes regardless of where they were committed.

Related: The Daily Mail has more here.

Link

Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Eight Syrians working with IRGC knifed to death in Deir Ezzor – report

2024-04-11

[IsraelTimes] Eight Syrian fighters working with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards were killed Tuesday in a knife attack on their position in eastern Syria’s Deir Ezzor province, a war monitor says.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says "unidentified armed individuals" raided the position in the Syrian desert, in the second deadly attack on pro-Iran
...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate ~~Jews~~ ~~Zionists~~ Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol...
fighters in two days in the Mayadeen area.

The eight dead fighters "worked under the command" of Iran’s Guards and were "slaughtered" using knives, says Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Britannia-based Observatory, which relies on a network of sources in Syria. It has been accused in the past of inflating corpse count numbers.

Control of Deir Ezzor is split between US-backed Kurdish-led forces to the east of the Euphrates River and Iran-backed Syrian government forces and their proxies to the west, while Islamic State

Link

Syria-Lebanon-Iran

One of the founders of Al-Nusra/Hayat Tahrir al-Sham was liquidated.

2024-04-08

Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.

Text taken from a Telegram post by AssadStash
[ColonelCassad] Fell victim to a showdown between terrorists in Idlib. He was seasoned and had been active in terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq since 2003.

A well-known extremist in the region and one of the leaders of the largest coalition of militants was killed in Syria.

Abu Marya al-Qahtani (or al-Qahtani) was killed by Islamic State militants in the town of Sarmada in Idlib province in northwestern Syria. The suicide bomber blew himself up, killing him and wounding two of his aides.

Al-Qahtani was 47 years old. Real name - Maysar al-Juburi, originally from Iraq from the vicinity of Mosul.

He is a veteran of all sorts of "militant" and security organizations, and his career path in jihadist circles is quite classic for many "colleagues" from his generation: he studied at the university, ended up in a pro-Saddam paramilitary group, joined the police, and after the US invasion in 2003 joined al-Qaeda.

He is best known for co-founding al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria in 2011, a group called Jabhat al-Nusra, which quickly became the largest and deadliest of the Syrian war. Then Al-Nusra grew to the size of an entire coalition of groups, formally broke ties with Al-Qaeda in order to build its own project, and is now called Tahrir al-Shyam.

Today, part of the territory of northern and northwestern Syria in the provinces of Idlib, Latakia and Aleppo remains under the control of militants. Abu Marya al-Qatani held the position of deputy supreme leader of the coalition and head of the religious council there.

The murder of Al-Qatani immediately caused a lot of controversy between the militants. Not everyone believed the version about the IS terrorists, with whom the Tahrir al-Sham terrorists have been competing for many years. Some militants believe that Al-Qatani was removed as a result of an internal struggle for power in the coalition. He spent six months in prison on charges of treason and collaboration with Western intelligence services, and then he was simply released without explanation.

Regardless, Abu Marya al-Qahtani was a powerful militant leader, a veteran of the 2011 Syrian war, and one of the veterans of the Middle East's jihadist movement, with its roots in post-Saddam Iraq.

The earth is glassy bastard.

Rudaw concurs:

"The jihadist Abu Maria al-Qahtani was killed and four others were seriously injured... as the result of a jacket wallah detonating an boom belt in his guesthouse in the town of Sarmada," stated the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).

Qahtani, whose real name is Maysar Ali Musa Abdallah al-Juburi, was brought to hospital with severe injuries and died there, Rooters reported, citing jihadist sources.

Qahtani, 47, was born in djinn-infested Mosul
... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn...
. He fought against United States forces after their invasion of Iraq in 2003. In 2011, he moved to Syria and was a co-founder of the Nusra Front, an offshoot of al-Qaeda. The group rebranded itself as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, formerly al-Nusra, before that it was called something else

Tahrir al-Sham, formerly al-Nusra, before that it was called something else

...al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, from which sprang the Islamic State...
(HTS) when it split from al-Qaeda and currently controls rebel-held northwestern Syria.

He has been under US sanctions since 2012.

There has been no immediate claim of responsibility, but HTS has blamed the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems....
(ISIS) for Qahtani’s death.

Last year, Qahtani was detained by HTS on the charge of communicating with "hostile parties," according to SOHR. He was released last month.

Link

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