Al Qaeda weapons expert: U.S. ambassador to Libya killed by lethal injection

Πηγή: Washington Times
By Bill Gertz
June 5 2013

An al Qaeda terrorist stated in a recent online posting that U.S. Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens was killed by lethal injection after plans to kidnap him during the Sept. 11 attacks in Benghazi went bad.

The veracity of the claim by Abdallah Dhu-al-Bajadin, who was identified by U.S. officials as a weapons expert for al Qaeda, could not be determined. However, U.S. officials have not dismissed the terrorist’s assertion.

An FBI spokeswoman indicated that the bureau is aware of the claim but declined to comment because of the ongoing investigation into the Benghazi attacks.

“While there is a great deal of information in the media and on the Internet about the attack in Benghazi, the FBI is not in a position at this time to comment on anything specific with regard to the investigation,” spokeswoman Kathy Wright said.

A State Department spokesman had no comment.

The FBI is investigating the deaths of Stevens, State Department information officer Sean Smith, and former Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty. They were killed in attacks that U.S. officials say were carried out by an al Qaeda-linked group known as Ansar al-Sharia.

A State Department Accountability Review Board report and an interim House Republican report on the attacks gave no cause of death for Stevens, whose body was recovered by Libyans in the early hours of Sept. 12.

The House report, “Interim Progress Report for the House Republican Conference,” said that “Libyan doctors tried unsuccessfully to resuscitate Ambassador Stevens upon his arrival at the hospital.”

To date, no official cause of death for Stevens has been made public, although it was reported that a Libyan doctor who examined Stevens said he died from apparent smoke inhalation and related asphyxiation.

Video and photos of Stevens being handled by a mob in Benghazi were posted on the Internet. It is not clear from the images whether he was dead or alive at the time.

According to a March 14 posting on an al Qaeda-linked website, Dhu-al-Bajadin stated that Stevens was given a lethal injection that was overlooked during the autopsy.

The “plan was based on abduction and exchange of high-level prisoners,” the terrorist wrote on the prominent jihadist Web forum Ansar al-Mujahideen Network. “However, the operation took another turn, for a reason God only knows, when one of the members of the jihadist cell improvised and followed Plan B.”

Dhu-al-Bajadin’s claim of assassination also was copied to the Ansar al-Mujahidin website from the al Qaeda-accredited website Shumukh al-Islam. That site is open only to members, and the claim initially was posted for Dhu-al-Bajadin by a member identified as Adnan Shukri.

The reference to Shumukh al-Islam has boosted the credibility of the claim among some U.S. intelligence analysts. A Western intelligence official said Dhu-al-Bajadin is a well-known jihadist and a key figure behind a magazine called Al Qaeda Airlines.

According to this official, intelligence analysts believe Dhu-al-Bajadin’s claim of assassination by lethal injection appears aimed, in part, at pressuring the U.S. government on its handling of the Benghazi attacks.

The article did not say what substance was used in the lethal injection. It also stated that the State Department had come under criticism for not providing adequate security in Benghazi before the attacks.

Dhu-al-Bajadin said he had more details about the attacks and the assassination, but would not reveal them in the posting.

The Washington Free Beacon obtained a copy of the translation of Dhu-al-Bajadin’s posting in Arabic.

The article stated that lethal injections are done in “more than one place in the human body that autopsy doctors ignore when they see that the symptoms are similar to another specific and common illness.”

“Anyone who studied the art of silent assassination that spies applied during the Cold War would easily identify these parts of the body,” the article stated.

Dhu-al-Bajadin has said the Al Qaeda Airlines publication is not solely focused on aviation but was chosen as a way to instill fear in the enemy.

Jihadist Leaders of Obama-Backed Libyan Rebellion Fought Against U.S. in Iraq

A Libyan rebel south of Benghazi on March 18, 2011. 

Πηγή: CNSNews
By Terence P. Jeffrey
Dec 20 2012

The special Accountability Review Board that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton set up to investigate the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, says that among the leaders of the 2011 Libyan revolution that President Barack Obama backed with U.S. military force—but without congressional authorization—were Benghazi-based jihadists who had fought against the United States in Iraq.

The report describes post-revoluationary Benghazi as a “a lawless town ... in reality run by a diverse group of local Islamist militias” that had a long history of violent antagonism toward the United States.

“Jihadis from Benghazi engaged in Afghanistan against the Soviets and took up arms against U.S. forces in the post-2003 Iraq insurgency,” says the report. “Many of them reemerged in 2011 as leaders of anti-Qaddafi militias in eastern Libya.”

“Benghazi, the largest city and historical power center in eastern Libya, was the launching point for the uprising against Qaddafi and a long time nexus of anti-regime activism,” says the report. “It also served as the rebel-led Transitional National Council’s base of operations. Eastern Libya (Cyrenaica) had long felt neglected and oppressed by Qaddafi, and there had been historic tensions between it and the rest of the country.”

“Benghazi was the seat of the Senussi monarchy until 1954, the site of a U.S. consulate, which was overrun by a mob and burned in 1967, and the place where Qaddafi began his 1969 revolution against the monarchy,” says the report.

“Qaddafi’s subsequent combination of oppression and neglect enhanced the city’s sense of marginalization, and its after-effects were felt more widely in the eastern region where a Salafist jihadist movement took root,” it says.

Obama announced on March 19, 2011 that he was ordering the U.S. military to take action in support of the Libyan revolutionaries. "Today I authorized the Armed Forces of the United States to begin a limited military action in Libya in support of an international effort to protect Libyan civilians."

Obama did not ask for authorization from the U.S. Congress to take this action, but instead said he drew his authority from what he called “the writ” of the international community.

"In this effort, the United States is acting with a broad coalition that is committed to enforcing United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973, which calls for the protection of the Libyan people," Obama said in a speech delivered in Brazil.

"Actions have consequences, and the writ of the international community must be enforced," he said. "That is the cause of this coalition."

Two weeks after Obama ordered the U.S. intervention, the State Department sent Chris Steven to Benghazi on a cargo ship to act as a special envoy to the revolutionaries.

“On April 5, 2011, then-Special Envoy to the Libyan Transitional National Council (TNC) Chris Stevens arrived via a Greek cargo ship at the rebel-held city of Benghazi to re-establish a U.S. presence in Libya,” says the report.

“Stevens’ presence in the city was seen as a significant sign of U.S. support for the TNC [Transitional National Council] and a recognition of the resurgence of eastern Libya’s political influence,” says the report.