The U.S. recently designated the jihad group Jabhat Al-Nusra (JN), which it considers a branch of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, as a terrorist organization, and also designated two of the group's top leaders: Anas Hassan Khattab and Maysar Ali Moussa 'Abdallah Al-Jubouri. Al-Jubouri (36) is an Iraqi national who came to Syria in mid-2011 to take part in establishing Al-Qaeda's presence in the country, and later became JN's commander in eastern Syria and the group's qadi, the head of its religious-judicial apparatus.[1] On January 2, 2012, Al-Jubouri announced that he is moving to northern Syria, to operate in the battlegrounds of Aleppo and Idlib.
Al-Jubouri has been very active online in the last few months. He maintains an active Twitter account, which he uses not only to spread JN's messages and respond to current events, but also to communicate with JN members and supporters in Syria and to issue calls for action. He has also joined various Islamist and jihadi forums, where he posts essays justifying JN's tactics and debates with its opponents. Facebook pages affiliated with JN have also posted messages by him. In his online messages Al-Jubouri uses the aliases Mus'ab Al-Qahtani,[2] Al-Gharib Al-Muhajir Al-Qahtani, and Mus'ab Al-Iraqi. Another nickname he uses is Abu Mariah. [3]
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