Documents circulating on social media over the last day appear to provide new details about the background of Syria’s new President Ahmed al-Sharaa. They claim to provide details about his role when he was suspected of being linked to terrorist and insurgent groups.
However, the documents require verification, and their overall summary doesn’t appear to show Sharaa was guilty of any crimes.
However, the new documents appear to show that Sharaa was held by US forces and the Iraqi government at detention camps such as Camp Bucca and Camp Taji. However, the fact that he may have been held at Bucca is interesting because the camp has been described as “Iraq’s militant university.”
Hassan Hassan, the founder of New Lines Magazine, posted about the new documents on April 17. “On the day Ahmad al-Sharaa received an invitation to attend the Arab Summit in Iraq a month from now, a pro-Iran Telegram channel leaked documents about his prison years & case in Iraq.”
The fact that the documents were released by a pro-Iran-linked source means they are intended to harm the image of Sharaa. Sharaa has increasing popularity in the region. He recently travelled to Turkey, the UAE, and Qatar. He has also been named to Time Magazine’s list of 100 influential people this year. His star is rising.
The fact that Sharaa was involved in extremist activities in Iraq is not a secret. The group he ran in Syria’s Idlib before coming to power was called Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, and it was linked to the Nusra Front, which was previously linked to al-Qaeda.
When he rolled into Damascus on December 8 as the Assad regime collapsed, many articles pointed out his background in Iraq. “Throughout his rise through extremist ranks, al-Sharaa was only known by the jihadi nickname he adopted, Abu Mohammed al-[Julani]. His ties to al-Qaeda stretch back to 2003, when he joined insurgents battling US troops in Iraq. The Syrian native was detained by the US military but remained in Iraq. During that time, al-Qaeda usurped like-minded groups and formed the extremist Islamic State of Iraq, led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,” the Associated Press noted. He returned to Syria after the Syrian uprising began in 2011.
BBC also noted that after “the 2003 US-led invasion, he joined other foreign fighters in Iraq and, in 2005, was imprisoned at Camp Bucca, where he enhanced his jihadist affiliations and later on was introduced to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the quiet scholar who would later go on to lead [Islamic State]. In 2011, Baghdadi sent Julani to Syria with funding to establish al-Nusra Front, a covert faction tied to ISIS. By 2012, Nusra had become a prominent Syrian fighting force, hiding its ISIS and al-Qaeda ties.”
The new leaked documents about Sharaa’s Iraqi era shed light on new details that were not known. According to Hassan’s summary of the documents, which included alleged photos of Sharaa and other material, there is some key information here.
He notes that “Sharaa was detained by US forces in Iraq from 2005 to 2011, under a false identity. He was released two days before the first Syrian protest against the Assad regime in 2011.”
WHAT THIS implies is that almost all of the time that Sharaa spent in Iraq was spent in detention camps or prison. That would seem to imply he didn’t conduct many operations in Iraq. Hassan noted, “[Sharaa] successfully convinced both the Americans and Iraqis that he was an Iraqi (Shia), from Nabi Younis, Mosul – born April 1, 1980 (not 1982). The name he used in detention: Amjad Muzzafir Hussein Ali / al-Nuaimi. Mother’s name: Fatima Ali. Prisoner ID: 174793.”
Why would a Sunni Arab from Syria, who was born in 1982 in Saudi Arabia, claim to be a Shi’ite? At the time, the insurgency in Iraq was divided along sectarian lines. Wouldn’t claiming he was Shi’ite put him in a part of the prison with other Shi’ites and risk his life?
The fact that he claimed to be from Mosul makes more sense. Mosul is a city that was home to many insurgents. It was also a large city with many former Ba’athist officers who had served in Saddam Hussein’s army.
It is also a city that has many Sunni Arabs and has connections to tribes in the desert who also have ties to Syria. It’s relatively close to Turkey. In prison, he might have found other people from Mosul.
Where was Shara'a detained and when?
According to the reports on the documents, Sharaa was detained in 2005 and held at Camp Bucca. He was apparently at Camp Bucca until 2010. The New Arab described Camp Bucca as “lying beside the idyllic waterway of the Shatt al-Arab, Iraq’s Camp Bucca has been described as one of the most brutal US prisons anywhere in the world. The detention facility was maintained by the US military in Basra province, and housed some of Iraq’s most dangerous prisoners.”
The site grew to some 40 sq.km. and had 24,000 detainees. “Practically all of the leadership of Iraq’s most extreme militant groups passed through Camp Bucca. Their names and pictures now make the front pages of newspapers around the world: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State group, was held at Bucca.”
This is apparently where Sharaa may have met Baghdadi. The report at The New Arab notes that ISIS was “born” in Bucca, and in 2010, reports said that detainees released from the camp formed the shock troops of the insurgency in Iraq.
Sharaa was moved to Camp Taji in 2010 as the US withdrew from Iraq. He was released on March 3, 2011, the documents claim to show. Twelve days after his release, protests in Syria’s southern city of Dara’a were suppressed by the regime, becoming a spark of the Syrian revolution.
Hassan’s summary of the new documents notes that “Sharaa was released by an Iraqi court because ‘he was not wanted by any interrogation authority and due to insufficient evidence.’ He was tried under ‘Article 4 – Terrorism.’ The court ruled there was no sufficient evidence for continued detention.” He was thus held, it seems, for six years without much evidence for crimes he allegedly committed.
The documents seem to lack key details. Hassan notes that “he was jailed early in the Iraqi insurgency. Separately, Syrian intelligence reports confirm he returned to Syria right after the fall of Baghdad but later disappeared. So he likely entered Iraq twice – and was arrested soon after the second entry, as previously suspected.”
What was he doing in Iraq prior to the fall of Baghdad? “The leaks intended to mobilize Iraqis against his invitation to visit Baghdad, but the documents show he was released for lack of evidence and because he wasn’t wanted by Iraqi authorities,” Hassan concludes.
Aaron Zelin, a senior fellow at The Washington Institute, noted in a post on X/Twitter that “These docs more or less confirm what Ahmad al-Shaara has said himself. Key question still remains: if al-Shaara really had no involvement directly in the insurgency, why did Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi initially trust him for the Jabhat al-Nusra [Front] project?”
The Iraqi invitation to Sharaa to visit is important. Iranian-backed militias in Iraq continue to play an outsized role in the country. They appear not to trust the new government in Damascus. The US is also weighing a drawdown of forces in Syria. This affects Iraq because US forces are also located in Iraq. An article at the Arabic media outlet Majalla noted some of the controversies surrounding Sharaa’s potential visit.
Rayan al-Kildani, who runs a Christian militia in Iraq called Kataib Babiliyoun, which is also the 50th Brigade of the Iranian-backed Popular Mobilization Forces, has critiqued Sharaa. Kildani’s Babylon Movement has several seats in Iraq’s parliament. Kildani said in an interview that he had “information regarding Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa’s involvement in the attack on Our Lady of Salvation Church in Baghdad,” Majalla noted. However, Majalla added that this was likely a false accusation.
Therefore, the appearance of the documents appears to be part of a potential Iranian-backed plot to muddy the waters before Sharaa visits. However, the documents don’t appear to show that Sharaa was guilty of anything. They appear to show he was wrongfully detained in Iraq for many years.