How Al Qaeda men came to power in Libya

Historical leader of Al Qaeda in Libya, Abdel Hakim Belhadj, is now the military governor of "liberated" Tripoli and in charge of organizing the army of the "new Libya".


by Thierry Meyssan


Voltaire Network has received letters from many readers enquiring about Al-Qaeda in Libya. To respond to them, Thierry Meyssan has assembled the main data available on the issue. The facts confirm his analysis, defended since the events of September 11, that Al Qaeda is a hotbed of mercenaries used by the United States to fight in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, Kosovo, Iraq, and now Libya, Syria and Yemen.


In the 80s, the CIA instigated Awatha al-Zuwawi to create an agency in Libya to recruit mercenaries for the jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan. As from 1986, recruits were trained in the Salman al-Farisi Libyan camp in Pakistan, under the authority of anti-Communist billionaire Osama bin Laden.

When bin Laden moved to Sudan, the Libyan jihadists followed him there, and regrouped in a compound of their own. In 1994, Osama bin Laden dispatched Libyan jihadists back to their country to kill Muammar Gaddafi and reverse the Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.

On 18 October 1995, the group reassembled under the label of Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG). During the three years that followed, the LIFG attempted to assassinate Muammar Gaddafi on four occasions and to establish a guerrilla in the Southern mountainous region. Following these operations, the Libyan army - under the command of General Abdel Fattah Younes - waged a campaign to eradicate the guerrillas, and the Libyan judicial authorities issued an arrest warrant against Osama bin Laden, disseminated internationally through Interpol as from 1998.

According to UK counter espionage agent David Shayler, the development of the LIFG and the first assassination attempt on Gaddafi by Al-Qaeda was funded by the British MI6 to the tune of 100,000 pounds [1].

At the time, Libya was the only state in the world that was hunting for Osama bin Laden, who still officially enjoyed the political support of the United States, despite his disapproval of "Operation Desert Storm."

Under pressure from Tripoli, Hassan el-Turabi expelled the Libyan jihadists from Sudan. They transferred their infrastructure to Afghanistan, where they set up the Shaheed Shaykh Abu Yahya camp (just north of Kabul). The lay-out lasted until the summer of 2001, when the Berlin negotiations between the U.S. and the Taliban on the Trans-Afghanistan pipeline fell through. At that time, Mullah Omar, who had anticipated the Anglo-American invasion, demanded that the camp be placed under his direct control.

On 6 October 2001, the LIFG was put on the list established by the Committee in pursuance of UN Security Council resolution 1267. It is still on it. On 8 December 2004, the LIFG was included on the list of terrorist organizations drawn up by the U.S. State Department. It is still on it. On 10 October 2005, the UK Department of the Interior banned the LIFG from its territory. This measure is still in force. On 7 February 2006, the United Nations adopted sanctions against five members of the LIFG and the four companies linked to them, which continue to operate unfettered on UK territory under the MI6 protection.

During the "war against terrorism", the organization of the jihadist movement got underway. "Al Qaeda", which was initially a large database from which Osama bin Laden chose the mercenaries he needed for specific missions, gradually morphed into a cluster of cells, the size of which decreased the more it became structured.

On 6 March 2004, the new LIFG leader Abdel Hakim Belhadj, who had fought in Afghanistan alongside Osama bin Laden [2] and Iraq, was arrested in Malaysia and then transferred to a secret CIA prison in Thailand, where he was injected with truth serum and tortured. Following an agreement between the United States and Libya, he was returned to Libya where he was again tortured, but this time at the hands of British agents at the Abu Salim Prison.

On 26 June 2005, Western intelligence agencies held a meeting in London of Libyan dissidents. They constituted the "National Conference of the Libyan opposition", bringing together three Islamic factions: the Muslim Brothers, the Senoussi Brotherhood and the LIFG. Their manifesto set forth three objectives:
- to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi;
- to exercise power for one year (under the name "National Transition Council");
- to restore the constitutional monarchy to its 1951 form and make Islam the state religion.
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