"In May, Al Jazeera Arabic released an interview with Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, the leader of al-Nusra, which came in for criticism in some quarters for being too lenient on the militant leader. "It's all part of a normalisation process that al-Qaeda in Syria has been seeking to do for some time now," said Charlie Winter, an analyst at the Quilliam Foundation. "It wants to appear more palatable to the West ... It was kind of like an infomercial for 'al-Nusra, the moderates'.” "