Ha'y'at Tahrir Al-Sham leadership confirmed the death of one of its founders

Last week, the leadership of Ha’y’at Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS, formerly Jabhat Al-Nusra) officially confirmed the death of Abu Maria Al-Qahtani in Idlib. According to the group, the militant, along with two HTS field commanders, was killed in a suicide bombing. Eight more people were injured. No one has yet claimed responsibility for the blast.

It was the HTS leader Abu Muhammad Al-Julani, who suspected his former partner of a conspiracy, and foreign jihadists, against whom Al-Qahtani launched repressions in Idlib several years ago, who wanted to eliminate him. Al-Qahtani also oppressed Russian-speaking militants.

The involvement of the Islamic State (IS) in his elimination is also a possibility. Since 2013, its militants have made at least four attempts to assassinate Al-Qahtani. The founder of HTS was at the origins of the split between Jabhat al-Nusra and IS. At the end of 2012, Al-Qahtani even planned to detain ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi and the group’s ideologist Abu Ali Al-Anbari. When direct clashes started between the two FTOs, Al-Qahtani earned the nicknames “Abu Maria Al-Galaxy” and “Abu Samsung Bin Galaxy” among IS militants. He was dubbed like that for motivating his subordinates to use smartphones produced by the South Korean company Samsung, seized from the bodies of defeated enemies, against IS militants. He also carried out a propaganda campaign against jihadists and led the elimination of IS cells in the areas controlled by HTS.

It is noteworthy that Abu Maria Al-Qahtani began his jihadist journey in 2001, signing up as a suicide bomber in the so-called Jerusalem Army militant group created under Saddam Hussein.