Hassan Soufan

Hassan Soufan
Birth name	Hassan Soufan
Nickname(s)	Abu al-Bara
Born	1977 (1977) Latakia
Allegiance	Ahrar al-Sham[1] Syrian Liberation Front National Front for Liberation
Years of service	2017–present
Battles / wars	Syrian Civil War Syrian Liberation Front–Tahrir al-Sham conflict Northwestern Syria offensive (April–August 2019)

Hassan Soufan, also known by his nom de guerre as Abu al-Bara, Is a Syrian rebel leader who participated in the Syrian Civil War. He was appointed as the leader of Ahrar al-Sham and held the position from July 2017 until his resignation in August 2018. He also served as the general commander of the Syrian Liberation Front, assuming the post in early 2018.

Hassan Soufan was born in the year 1977 in the coastal Syrian city of Latakia and had fully memorized the Quran at a young age.

Soufan had received a degree in economics from the Tishreen University. He had lived in Saudi Arabia and studied Islamic Theology while there under scholars including Muhammad ibn al Uthaymeen and Abdullah Ibn Jibreen, until Soufan's arrest in 2005 by Saudi authorities and deportation back to Syria. Upon returning to Syria he was held in the Sednaya Prison and took part in a riot there in 2008 taking several guards hostage and later negotiated their release with Syrian officials, during his time in prison he associated with factions in the prison that would later go on to form al-Nusra and ISIL. A former fellow prisoner who knew Soufan who has become an activist has described Soufan as a moderate saying he disagrees with the approaches and positions taken by al-Nusra and ISIL but does not intend to fight them or any other Islamic factions and he is against infighting, and views issue such as Takfir as among the most complex issues in Islamic theology. The activist also claimed that Soufan's ideology is the same as Ahrar al-Sham's early leadership.^[2]

He was released from prison in late-December 2016 following a prisoner swap between the Syrian government and the rebels, and was appointed the leader of Ahrar al-Sham in mid-2017.^[3] He has promised a revival of Ahrar al-Sham and has blamed the former leadership of the group for its decline. In 2018 he was made the general commander of the Syrian Liberation Front, a merger of Ahrar al-Sham and the Nour al-Din al-Zenki Movement which later came into conflict with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham shortly after its formation in February 2018.^[4] In August 2018 he resigned from his position as the leader of Ahrar al-Sham.^{[citation needed]}

In May 2019, he resigned from his position as the leader of the National Front for Liberation as well as his position in Ahrar al-Sham for unknown reasons, he stated the reasons were personal, he also stated he was committed to fighting and would continue to participate in the Syrian Civil War.^[5]