Active

Terror organization: Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), Former Ahrar al-Sham.

Status: One of the top commanders of HTS, former leader of the Ahrar al-Sham Islamic Movement.

Role: Abu Jaber Maskanah fought with al-Qaeda in Iraq under the leadership of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, between 2003 and 2005, where he worked to secure the exit of fighters from Syria to Iraq. Many of the current leaders of the Ahrar al-Sham Movement worked with him, and he was arrested on Syrian territory in 2005 and ended up in Sednaya prison, where he was sentenced to 8 years in prison.

In 2011, Abu Jaber was released after an amnesty from the Syrian government that included a number of political prisoners who had served three-quarters of their sentences. After his release, he founded an armed group to fight the Syrian state, which he called the “Musab bin Omair” Battalion in the city of Maskanah in the eastern countryside of Aleppo. He fought battles towards the cities and neighborhoods of Raqqa, Tabqa, the Jarrah Military Airport, Khanaser, and other areas. The battalion he led then joined what was then called the “Fajr al-Sham Islamic Movement,” and the movement became part of the “Ahrar al-Sham Movement” after taking control of the Jarrah Military Airport in March 2013.

Abu Jaber was appointed a member of the Shura Council of the “Ahrar al-Sham Movement” and the Emir of its eastern sector, then the Emir of Aleppo after the killing of the founding leader “Abu Khaled al-Suri”. He assumed leadership of the movement after the bombing that targeted a meeting of the movement’s leaders in the town of Ram Hamdan in the Idlib countryside, which resulted in the death of more than 45 first- rank leaders and field and military officials on September 9, 2014. Among the dead was the general official Hassan al-Aboud, nicknamed “Abu Abdullah al-Hamawi”.

Abu Jaber al-Sheikh, along with the former general military commander of Ahrar al- Sham, Abu Saleh Tahan, the former general religious authority, Abu Muhammad al- Sadiq, and the security official, Abu Khuzaymah al-Sabini, form a powerful group within the movement. They all defected and joined the new formation called “Hay’at Tahrir al- Sham.” These three had previously founded “Jaysh al-Ahrar” following a dispute with the movement’s current leadership, represented by Abu Ammar al-Omar.

The selection of Abu Jaber as the leader of the new formation sends messages in multiple directions. The most prominent of which is to the international community, especially since this man, although some newspapers describe him as the “killer of Americans in Iraq”, is currently considered one of the fiercest enemies of ISIS, as his group was the first to fight this organization in late 2013 and early 2014, and as a result of those battles, Dr. Ryan was killed, as his death under torture was one of the sparks that ignited the battles at that time.

On 28 January 2017, he became the emir of the new Tahrir al-Sham Islamist alliance, with Abu Mohammad al-Julani serving as its military commander. In October 2017 he resigned from his role as the Emir of HTS, and Julani took over the leadership as the new Emir. Abu Jaber became a member of the shura council of HTS. Today he is a first-rank leader and a “student” of the agenda of Mahmoud Ghoul Agha Abu Al-Qaqa Al-Suri. His son was killed by HTS people in a checkpoint (some say by mistake and others as a yellow card for him to not try to launch a coup on Julani).

Location: Syria.

Also Known As: Abu Jaber; Abu Jaber Maskanah; Hashim al-Sheikh;