The Syrian resident of Spain who died trying to mediate with Islamic State

“Crush them and kill the conspiracy in the cradle.” The order given by the spokesman for the Islamic State (ISIS), Abu Mohamed Al-Adnani, to declare war on the other rebel groups fighting in Syria to overthrow Bashar al-Asad was not waived for the veteran jihadist who came to negotiate – a Syrian resident who lived in Spain for many years, and who paid with his life for his intervention.

On February 23, 2014, two months after Al-Adnani’s message was posted on the social networks, Mohamed Bahaiah, known as Abu Khaled al Suri, was murdered along with several of his men in the Syrian city of Aleppo in a suicide attack carried out by ISIS fighters. Bahaiah was the envoy of Ayman al Zawahiri, the Egyptian pediatrician who took over from Osama bin Laden at the helm of Al Qaeda Central, sent to negotiate an end to the internal disputes within ISIS.

Bahaiah was the envoy of Ayman al Zawahiri, the Egyptian pediatrician who took over from Osama bin Laden at the helm of Al Qaeda

Weeks before Bahaiah’s death, the Spanish intelligence services tried to meet with him in Turkey, but failed. “He was too trusting. We are certain that his death was ordered by Islamic State. They killed him when he turned up to meet them. This was a meeting with one of Al Zawahiri’s men,” an authorized source has told EL PAÍS.

Bahaiah was well known to the Spanish security services, and there are photographs and videos of him in Madrid and Granada. As with his boss and friend Mustafá Setmarian, another nationalized Syrian, he soon attracted the attention of the authorities when he moved to Spain and began fundraising and recruiting.

The pair ended up in Madrid in the 1980s, after they fled Syria, then under the rule of Hafed al-Assad, father of the current president, where members of the organization they belonged to, the Muslim Brotherhood, were being hunted down. Along with fellow Syrian Imad Eddin Barakat, alias Abu Dahdah, they created the first Al Qaeda cell in Spain, at a time when only a few police officers were assigned to monitoring their movements, which involved contact with mujahedeen heading off to fight in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Chechnya.

Al Zawahiri’s mediator became a messenger for Bin Laden in Europe, and according to Judge Baltasar Garzón, was financing Al Qaeda from Spain. One intercepted letter sent to an address in Madrid used by his brother-in-law, Ghaleb Kalaje, confirmed for example that the money received by Nabil Kousaibati, another nationalized Syrian who had been condemned to death in Yemen, was sent on Bahaiah’s orders. Kalaje was condemned to nine years in prison for collaborating with Al Qaeda, but Bahaiah was able to escape to Afghanistan along with his wife, the younger sister of Ghaleb.

Al Zawahiri’s mediator became a messenger for Bin Laden in Europe, and was financing Al Qaeda from Spain

Over the course of the last decade, Bahaiah worked closely with Setmarian, who eventually rose to be fourth in command at Al Qaeda Central. “He was his right-hand man,” says a member of the Spanish security forces. He was arrested in Quetta, in Pakistan, in 2005, along with Setmarian. Both disappeared into the secret jails run by the CIA, finally resurfacing in a Syrian jail before the uprising against the al-Assad regime began. In 2012, he was released and allowed to regroup with his family. He later joined Harakat Ahrar al Sham, one of the most powerful rebel groups. A hashtag commemorated the death of the “martyr,” who was killed believing he could mediate a solution to the conflicts within ISIS.