Jordanian authorities on Wednesday released Jordanian Sheik Abu Mohammad al-Maqdisi, a leading al-Qaida mentor, after several years imprisonment without trial, security sources said.
They said Maqdisi, who was regarded as the spiritual mentor of slain al-Qaida leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, had been in solitary confinement since he was rearrested in July 2005 following his acquittal at a trial of al-Qaida sympathizers.
“He was released,” said one security source without elaborating on the circumstances of the release of Maqdisi.
The militant Jihadi shared a cell block with al-Zarqawi for four years between 1995 and 1999. Both were freed in an amnesty. Zarqawi later went to Afghanistan then Iraq.
U.S. intelligence officials say Maqdisi is a major Jihadi mentor who wields more influence over Islamist ideology than leading militants such as Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri.
A study by a private think tank of the U.S. military academy West Point in 2006 described Maqdisi, a self-taught religious intellectual, as the most influential living Islamist mentor.
