Mustafa Setmariam Nasar

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Mustafa bin Abd al-Qadir Sitt Maryam Nasar, also transliterated as Mustafa Sethmariam Nasar (Arabic:مصطفى بن عبد القادر ست مريم نصار), (born ca. 1958 in Aleppo, Syria) is a suspected al-Qaeda member and writer. He is best known by his nom de guerre Abu Mus'ab al-Suri (or as-Suri, which is how it is pronounced) and by his nom de plume Umar Abd al-Hakim^[1]^[2]. Al-Suri is Arabic for the Syrian.

Nasar was reportedly captured in the Pakistani city of Quetta in late October 2005, although exactly where and when is disputed.^[2] He was captured by Pakistani security forces and handed over to American custody a month or so later. Since he was not among the 14 high-profile al-Qaida suspects transferred to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in late 2006, it has been inferred that Nasar has been sent back to Syria.^{[citation needed]} He is wanted (as a witness) in Spain^[2]^[3] in connection with the 2004 Madrid train bombings, and wanted in Syria^[3].

Nasar was initially mentioned by British media as a possible suspected planner in the 2005 transport bombings in London. Subsequent investigations have not revealed any evidence of his role in the terrorist attacks.^{[citation needed]}

Nasar has ginger hair, green eyes, and a light complexion. He 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 offshot of the SyrianMuslim Brotherhood, which was at the forefront in the armed uprising against Hafez Assad's regime. 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 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 Soviet Union in Afghanistan and the Communist regime 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 Ladin until c.1992, when Nasar returned to Spain.^{[citation needed]} 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 vicious 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 his wife Elena Moreno in 1987 (or 88), who converted to Islam, which gave him Spanish citizenship. They have four children.

Among his associates there were 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 September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States. 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 time Nasar edited al-Ansar, the most important jihadi magazine at the time, with ties to the Algerian Armed Islamic Group. 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.^[4]

In 1997, Nasar established a media company called Islamic Conflict Studies Bureau with Mohamed Bahaiah, better known as Abu Khalid al-Suri, an al-Qaeda courier. Through this media office he facilitated two important media events for bin Ladin in Afghanistan, in particular CNN's famous interview with bin Ladin in March 1997.

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 Taliban's Ministry of defense, and separate from al-Qaida and bin Ladin's organization, whom he had fallen out with in 1998. In a seven-page letter from mid-1998, Nasar launched scathing criticism of bin Ladin for his disobedience vis-a-vis the Taliban ruler Mullah Omar, and more generally for his leadership style.

Due to his prolific writings on strategic and political issues, and his guerrilla warfare experience, Nasar was a popular lecturer and to a certain degree an unofficial adviser for a wide range of jihadi groups in Afghanistan. Organizationally, however, he remained a rather independent figure. While some reports have linked him to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who later led al-Qaeda's component of the insurgency in Iraq, his network of contacts was much wider, and included jihadis from Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraqi Kurdistan, Saudi-Arabia, Yemen, Uzbekistan, and elsewhere. Media reports have also alleged that one of his associates, the Moroccan Amer Azizi, (Uthman al-Andalusi), had met September 11 organizers Mohammed Atta and Ramzi bin al-Shibh in Tarragona, Spain weeks before the attacks, but this seems to be incorrect.

Nasar's best known work is the 1600-page book The Global Islamic Resistance Call (Da'wat al-muqawamah al-islamiyyah al-'alamiyyah) which appeared on the Internet in December 2004 or January 2005.^[3] In it author Lawrence Wright reports that Nasar

proposes that the next stage of jihad will be characterized by terrorism created by individuals or small autonomous groups (what he terms `leaderless resistance') which will wear down the enemy and prepare the ground for the far ambitious aim of waging war on `open fronts' .... `without confrontation in the field and seizing control of the land, we cannot establish a state, which is the strategic goal of the resistance.' The American occupation of Iraq, he declares, inaugurated a `historical new period' that almost single-handedly rescued the jihadi movement just when many of its critics thought it was finished.^[4]

In September 2003, Spanish magistrate Baltasar Garzon indicted 35 members of the Madrid cell for its role in the September 11 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.^[5]