[Tee tiong huat]

How a Syrian Rebel Went From an American Jail to Seizing Aleppo. Once affiliated with Islamic State and al Qaeda, Jawlani professes religious tolerance. Many have doubts.

Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani boarded a bus in Damascus in March 2003, heading across the desert to Baghdad with fellow volunteers eager to repel the looming American invasion of Iraq.W
When he returned home in 2011, after 5-year stint in American-run prison camp in Iraq, it was as the emissary of Islamic State founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Jawlani arrived in Syria with bags full of cash, and a mission to take the extremist movement global.
https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/wh...i-9b157eff

How Syria’s rebel leader went from radical jihadist to a blazer-wearing ‘revolutionary’
Mostafa Salem, CNN.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/06/middleeas...index.html