Abu Musab al-Suri (a.k.a. Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, Omar Abdel Hakim) is a prime suspect in the London 7/7 attacks. Counterterrorism expert Evan Kohlmann of Global Terror Alert and The Counterterrorism Blog provides a detailed profile of al-Suri (the Syrian) as well as video from in 2000. His connections to radical Islam run deep.
Abu Musab al-Suri (a.k.a. Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, Omar Abdel Hakim) was born in October 1958 in Aleppo, Syria. Nasar was a member of the radical Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and was forced to seek exile from his homeland during the 1980s, traveling throughout the Middle East and North Africa-and eventually finding his way to the ongoing jihad in Afghanistan. Abu Musab would later issue a statement clarifying his early involvement with Al-Qaida and the Arab-Afghans:
“I was honored to participate in the Afghani jihad against the Russians and the communists until we exterminated their forces and lowered their flanks and made an example out of them-as we will also do with America, with the help of Allah I was honored to become acquainted with Shaykh Abdullah Azzam, and I worked with him during the days of the Afghani jihad in 1987. Then in 1988, I was honored by coming to know Shaykh Usama [Bin Laden], I was honored to become a member of Al-Qaida, and I worked with the group until 1992. During that time, I trained its first elite fighters and I was an instructor at its camps and other Arab-Afghan camps in various military and organizational methodologies, especially given my own high-degree of specialized training in explosives production, special operations, and guerilla warfare that I received in Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt. All praise be to Allah for his blessing.”
Note al-Suri’s training in Iraq, prior to 1992.
Mr. Kohlmann documents al-Suri’s extensive ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA), the Taliban, and al Qaeda. al-Suri is quoted extensively in this profile, his own words are proof of his terrorist pedigree.
