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Libya on Verge of Al-Qaeda/Muslim Brotherhood Coup d’Etat: Is This What You Want in Syria?
1 May 2013
(LPAC)—On Tuesday, April 23, a car bomb destroyed the French Embassy in Tripoli, Libya. Just days before, on Friday, April 19, a threat had been issued against France by al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. On Saturday, April 27, another explosion destroyed the police station in Benghazi. Beginning on Sunday, April 28, armed militia blockaded the Foreign Ministry in Tripoli, demanding that the Political Isolation Law be passed by the General National Congress of Libya. They gave a deadline of April 30. They also demanded the resignation of the Foreign Affairs minister. Later on Sunday they also blockaded the Interior Ministry. They also urged the Congress to vote out the government of Prime Minister Ali Zeidan. On Tuesday, April 30, armed men in vehicles equipped with anti-aircraft guns surrounded the Ministry of Justice. They asked the minister and staff to leave and close the ministry. Later in the day over 1000 demonstrators from the city of Suz al-Juma arrived outside the Congress carrying 265 coffins, each representing someone who died for the revolution. The demonstrators are also demanding that the Congress pass the Political Isolation Law. According to the Libya Herald, the GNC was supposed to meet on April 30. However, after the armed demonstration the GNC suspended its scheduled session and rescheduled it for Sunday, May 5. On Monday, April 29, the leader of the Homeland Party, Abdurrahman Sewehli, reported that the Political Isolation Law is due to be debated by the GNC on Sunday, May 5. Under the Political Isolation Law, if passed, anyone who held a position in the Qaddafi regime over the last 30 years would be banned for 10 years from holding office in the government. The law would effectively remove the President, the Prime Minister, and one-third of the GNC from office and would amount to a legal coup d’etat by the forces of the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) and the Muslim Brotherhood. On March 5, 500-600 armed demonstrators held hostage 26 members of the GNC in an attempt to coerce them into passing the Political Isolation Law. When they did not vote on the law and GNC President Mohamed Magarief attempted to leave the building, his car was fired upon in an assassination attempt, the second this year. The law is backed by the top leadership of the LIFG. The former emir of the LIGF, Abdelhakim Belhadj, gave an interview to Asharq Al-Awsat, reprinted in The Majalla on March 4, in which he supported the law. The New York Times reported on February 18 that at the January national conference of the Association of the Families of the Abu Salim Prison Massacre in Tripoli, Libyan legislator Abdel Wahab Mohamed Qaid led a chant in support of the country’s proposed Political Exclusion Law. He is the former military commander of the LIFG who is currently head of the national security committee of the GNC. His brother, Abu Yahya al-Libi, was the second-in-command of Al-Qaeda in Pakistan, killed by a U.S. drone attack in June 2012. Sami al-Saadi, the former chief ideologist of the LIFG, has also endorsed the law, in including its application to the judiciary. On April 29, France24, in reporting on the bombing of the French Embassy in Tripoli, quoted Mathieu Pellerin, director at the Centre of Strategic Intelligence on the African Continent (CISCA) saying: "Liberals and reformers from the Gaddafi era are If it is true that Belhadj is the "current head of domestic security" in Libya, the LIFG, an organization designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization and which officially affiliated with Al Qaeda in 2007, has consolidated its control of Libya even before the vote. It was previously known that Belhadj was head of the Tripoli Military Council beginning in August 2011. According to a report published by New York University’s Center on International Cooperation, Belhadj had sought to be appointed as the formal head of the new armed forces, but faced competition for the position and was passed over in November 2011. In the spring of 2012 Belhadj resigned as commander of the Tripoli Military Council to found his own political party and run in the elections in July 2012, in which he lost. However, according to a New York Times article published on September 3, 2011, after he was made the commander of the Tripoli Military Council, he was also appointed as one of the 21 members of the Supreme Security Committee (SSC) of Libya. There is no public confirmation that he stepped down from this position. It should be recalled that in the attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, the SSC played a critical role. It was an officer of the SSC who was observed taking photos of the mission on the morning of the attack, and it was the SSC which was supposed to park a police vehicle outside the mission 24/7, but did not. The SSC vehicle left the scene just before the attack began. Today, Mohamed Magarief, President of the GNC, arrived in Qatar, where he will hold talks with the Emir of Qatar. During the overthrow of Qaddafi, Qatar provided arms directly to Belhadj and the LIFG, with Obama’s approval, bypassing the Transitional National Council. Magarief undoubtedly hopes to negotiate a resolution to the crisis in Libya. [WFW] |