Ten million dollars bounty Who is Abu Mohammed al-Julani, the man who overthrew Assad?

Abu Mohammed al-Julani has often changed. The leader of the uprising that brought an end to the Assad family's decades-long dictatorship in Syria within days has spent years working on his image.

Following the insurgents' advance into the Syrian capital Damascus and the flight of head of state Bashar al-Assad, it is unclear for the first time in more than 50 years of dictatorship who will rule Syria in the future. Abu Mohammed al-Julani and his insurgent force Hajat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), whose fighters are largely jihadists, are likely to be an important player.

The USA classifies the 42-year-old as a terrorist, while he has cut his long-standing ties to the al-Qaeda terrorist network and presents himself as an advocate of pluralism and tolerance. Most recently, he even gave up his warrior name and went back to his civilian name of Ahmad al-Sharaa.

The extent of this transformation from self-proclaimed holy warrior to would-be state founder is now being put to the test. Al-Julani has not spoken publicly since the fall of Damascus early on Sunday.

While Assad's Iran- and Russia-backed rule over much of Syria appeared to be consolidated, al-Julani was stuck in Idlib province in the north-west of the country. There he spent years consolidating his rule. He manoeuvred between extremist organizations and eliminated rivals and former allies. At the same time, he tried to win over international governments for his group and to appease Syria's religious and ethnic minorities. He also established relationships with tribes and other groups.

Along the way, al-Julani shed the image of an Islamist guerrilla leader. He appeared in a suit for press interviews. He spoke of building state institutions and decentralizing power to reflect Syria's diversity. "Syria deserves a system of government that is institutional and not one in which a single ruler makes arbitrary decisions," Al-Julani said in an interview with CNN last week, raising the possibility of the HTS being dissolved after the fall of Assad. "Don't judge by words, judge by deeds," he said.

Al-Julani's links to al-Qaeda go back to 2003, when he joined extremists fighting against US troops in Iraq. Born in Syria, he was arrested by the US military but remained in Iraq. During this time, al-Qaeda ousted like-minded groups and founded the terrorist militia "Islamic State" in Iraq under the leadership of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

In 2011, Syrian President Assad brutally crushed a popular uprising against his rule, triggering the civil war that continues to this day. Al-Julani's notoriety grew when al-Baghdadi sent him to Syria to found an al-Qaeda offshoot called the Nusra Front. The United States classified the new group as a terrorist organization. This classification still applies. The US government has put a bounty of ten million dollars (around 9 million Swiss francs) on al-Julani's head.

As the Syrian civil war intensified in 2013, al-Julani's ambitions also increased. He resisted calls from IS leader al-Baghdadi to disband the Nusra Front and merge it with the offshoots of al-Qaeda in Iraq to form the "Islamic State" in Iraq and Syria.

When al-Qaeda distanced itself from IS, al-Julani declared his allegiance to al-Qaeda and eliminated most of his rivals in the armed Syrian opposition to Assad. In his first interview in 2014, Al-Julani kept his face covered and told a reporter from the Qatari broadcaster Al-Jazeera that he rejected political talks in Geneva to end the conflict. His goal, he said, was to govern Syria according to Islamic law. He also made it clear that there was no place for the country's Alawite, Shiite, Druze and Christian minorities.

In 2016, al-Julani showed his face to the public for the first time when he announced in a video message that his group would rename itself Jabhat Fateh al-Sham - the Syrian Conquest Front - and cut its ties to al-Qaeda. "This new organization has no connection to any external organization," he said in the video, in which he was filmed in military dress and wearing a turban.

This move paved the way for Al-Julani to take full control of the splintered militant groups. A year later, the groups merged and al-Julani renamed his alliance Hajat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS for short. Al-Julani's power in the north-western Syrian province of Idlib was consolidated.

The HTS later clashed with independent Islamist fighters who opposed the merger, further strengthening al-Julani and his HTS as the leading force in north-western Syria, able to rule with an iron fist.

Once his power was consolidated, al-Julani initiated a change that few could have imagined. He wore shirts and trousers instead of military dress and began to call for religious tolerance and pluralism. He reached out to the Druze community in Idlib, which his Nusra Front had been targeting. Al-Julani also visited the families of Kurds who had been killed by Turkish-backed militias.

In 2021, al-Julani conducted his first interview with an American journalist from PBS. He was wearing a blazer and had his short hair combed back. The rather taciturn HTS leader assured the journalist that his group posed no threat to the West and that the sanctions imposed on them were unjust. "Yes, we have criticized Western policy," he said. However, they were not waging a war from Syria against the USA and Europe. "We have not said that we want to fight," said Al-Julani.