The U.S. Department of State’s Rewards for Justice Program is offering a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to the identification or location of Muhammad al-Jawlani, leader of the al-Nusrah Front, or ANF, terrorist group.
This is the first Rewards for Justice reward offer for a leader of al-Nusrah Front, the Syrian branch of al-Qa’ida.
In 2013, al-Jawlani pledged allegiance to al-Qa’ida and its leader Ayman al-Zawahiri after he had a public falling out with ISIS. In 2016, in a video posted online, al-Jawlani praised al-Qa’ida and al-Zawahiri and claimed the ANF was changing its name to Jabhat Fath Al Sham.
Under al-Jawlani’s leadership, ANF has carried out multiple terrorist attacks throughout Syria, often targeting civilians. In April 2015, ANF reportedly kidnapped, and later released, approximately 300 Kurdish civilians from a checkpoint in Syria. In June 2015, ANF claimed responsibility for the massacre of 20 residents in a Druze village in Idlib province, Syria.
In January 2017, ANF merged with several other hardline opposition groups to form Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS. ANF remains al-Qa’ida’s affiliate in Syria and Jawlani remains the leader of ANF, which is at the core of HTS.
In 2014, ANF was designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the State Department. The same year, the UN added ANF to its sanctions list.
Since its inception in 1984, the Rewards for Justice program has paid in excess of $125 million to more than 80 people who provided actionable information that helped bring terrorists to justice or prevented acts of international terrorism worldwide.
For more information about al-Jawlani go to www.rewardsforjustice.net. We encourage anyone with information about al-Jawlani to contact the Rewards for Justice office via e-mail on the website: info@rewardsforjustice.net; by phone, 1-800-877-3927 in North America; or by mail, Rewards for Justice, Washington, D.C., 20520-0303, USA.
All information will be kept strictly confidential.
