Remember Abu al-Waleed al-Maqdisi? The Jordanian militant had an audio recording appear on YouTube last month declaring his defection from Daesh. Now it looks like only six months ago, he was doing the same with Nusra.
We tracked down another recording purporting to be his voice uploaded on YouTube last December. Here, he announces his departure from Nusra, condemns it as an "apostate" group and declares he's been convinced by Daesh's ideology and caliphate goals. The 20-minute recording, published on December 19, is below.
Like the one from last month, Al Bawaba cannot independently verify the authenticity of the recording. But if both are indeed Maqdisi, they provide interesting insight into how his views on Daesh have changed since joining in December.
A report by Al Monitor earlier in May reported a growing rift between Daesh and Syria's al-Qaeda wing Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria's Qalamoun. Keep in mind, as we reported earlier this week, this is also where Maqdisi claimed to be operating as a Daesh emir.
According to the report, al-Nusra's emir Abu Malek al-Talli had long regarded Daesh allies and “advocates of the same ideology." It was only during incidents in May that this changed, leading Nusra to attack Daesh posts for one of the first times in the area. But already an emir for Daesh, Maqdisi was reportedly stoking the flames between the groups in January 2015, when he issued a fatwa calling al-Nusra a takfiri, or apostate, group.
