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Al-Nursa Front
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Abu Mohammad, Zawahiri
Masri joined Zawahiri’s Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) group in Egypt in the late 1980s and grew close to Zawahiri himself.Together the joined Osama bin Laden’s inner circle. He was implicated in the plotting of the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, and was reportedly tasked with handling the travel logistics and expenses of al-Qaeda fighters deployed on foreign operations prior to 9/11. -
Arrested
Abu Mohammad was reportedly arrested in April 2003 by Iranian authorities in Shiraz, Iran. -
Founder and Founding Date
Founder: Abu Mohammad al-Julani
Founded: January 23, 2012, Syria -
Abu Mohammad al-Julani
Detained in Iran between 2003 and 2015, al-Julani traveled to Syria following his release to join al-Qaeda there. -
House Arrest
According to reports, Abu Mohammad was held under house arrest for approximately 12 years before being released in March 2015 in exchange for an Iranian diplomat held in Yemen. -
Jabhat al-Nusra
was a Salafist jihadist organization fighting against Syrian government forces in the Syrian Civil War. -
Accepting the Nusra Front’s split
Abu Mohammad resurfaced in a July 2016 al-Qaeda audio statement, identified as Zawahiri’s deputy. In the statement, Mohammad accepted the Nusra Front’s split from al-Qaeda, saying that al-Qaeda would support whatever “protects the jihad of the Syrian people.” -
Abu Mohammad Killed
Al-Julani was reportedly killed by a U.S. drone strike in northwest Syria in late February 2017