Sudanese military government released from prison last week Muhammad Suleiman al-Nafa, known as "Abu Matzab al-Sudani", a longtime al-Qaeda operative believed to be close to the organization's leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and alleged to have been involved in the downing of US Black Hawk helicopters, in Somalia in 1993, a newspaper reported in the country.

According to the al-Sudani newspaper, al-Nafa was released from prison in Khartoum after nearly ten years under the directive of the head of the Sovereignty Council, 'Abd al-Fatah al-Burhan, to end the incarceration of suspects who have not been involved in terrorist activities in the country.

The Americans arrested al-Nafa (59) in Kenya in late 2000, after he was tempted to come to the country by his brother-in-law, Jamal al-Fadl, an associate of Osama bin Laden who became an American informant and provided information about the terrorist organization at the beginning of his career. Al-Nafa was detained in New York for four months but refused to cooperate.

According to the Americans, al-Nafa was involved in the "Black Hawk Down" incident, the downing of two helicopters in Mogadishu in October 1993, an incident in which 19 soldiers were killed, and was also linked to the 1998 embassy attack in East Africa. However, he was convicted, according to his confession, only of conspiracy to harm American security facilities and was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2003.

During the trial, al-Nafa said that when bin Laden moved to Sudan in 1991, he helped him set up companies, which the prosecution claimed worked to acquire weapons, explosives and chemicals. He also organized a convoy of camels to smuggle activists and weapons from Sudan into Egypt. 

He also revealed that in 1989 he set up a jihadist group in Sudan to recruit locals at the request of al-Qaeda's military commander. He also attended a meeting with senior al-Qaeda figures in 1992, where they discussed ways to force US and UN forces to withdraw from Somalia and Saudi Arabia.