The Libyan Revolution

The US air force has said it targeted a notorious jihadi leader linked to al-Qaida in a weekend air strike on Libya. But there was no confirmation of the reported death of Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who was accused of leading an attack on a gas plant in Algeria in 2013 that killed 40 hostages. The raid near Adjabiya was carried out by F-15E aircraft using precision weapons.

The US air force secretary, Deborah Lee James, said “enormous care” had been taken to avoid harming civilians. “The impact of the raid is still being assessed,” she told reporters at the Paris air show. “I have absolute confidence in our people and the intelligence, but this is not exact science.” She said Belmokhtar had “a long history of terror with al-Qaida affiliates”.                                                      

A senior Tunisian Al-Qaeda member, Afghanistan veteran, and founder of the Islamist organization, Ansar al-Sharia in Tunisia (AST), Seifallah Ben Hassine, commonly known as, Abu Iyadh al-Tunisi, “one of North Africa’s most influential jihadi ideologues”, is now confirmed to have been killed on February 21 a couple of years ago, in northern Mali, in an operation by French forces in the area of El Aklé, nearly 300 km northwest of Timbuktu, Mali, on the border with Mauritania. This raid of Bakhane`s also saw the neutralization of the no 2 of JNIM, Yahya Abu al-Hammam and the capture of Abu Obeida Youssef al-Annabi, Abu Obeida Youssef Al-Anabi, whose real name is Mubarak Yazid, the number two of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) “and widely favored to succeed the current leader of this organization, Abdelmalek Droukdel”.

                                                 Abu Obeida Youssef Al-Anabi.

Abdelmalek Droukdel

 In the wake of the Tunisian Revolution, in 2011, Abu Iyadh founded the Ansar al-Sharia in Tunisia (AST) and mobilized tens of thousands of Islamists.

In mid-August 2012, Abu Iyadh hosted late the Bahraini Islamic State ideologue, Turki al-Bin’ali, in his hometown of Menzel Bourguiba. A month later, he commanded the assault on the US embassy in Tunis. The following year, two political assassinations of the opposition politicians, Chokri Belaid and Mohamed Brahmi took place; Abu Iyad is among the primary suspects to have planned the assassinations. Abu Iyadh escaped arrest attempts twice and the Tunisian government declared the AST a terrorist organization in 2013. Since then, the whereabouts of Abu Iyadh have been shrouded in mystery after he fled Tunisia for Libya. In fact, he was announced dead in 2015, although he wasn’t.

On June 14, 2015, the US conducted an airstrike against a farm south of Ajdabiya. Both Abu Iyadh and the Algerian militant commander, Mokhtar Belmokhtar, were reported to have been killed in the airstrike. Eventually, those killed were local Ansar al-Sharia members. “The farm belonged to another Al-Qaeda veteran called, al-Saadi Bukhazem al-Nawfali (Abu Abdallah)”, who, in the early 2000s, fought in Iraq as a member of the Jama’at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, under the leadership of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Al-Nawfali was imprisoned upon return to Libya, although in the wake of the Libyan Revolution he became the emir of the Ajdabiya Shura Council, which in 2016 became, “Operations Room for the Liberation of the City Ajdabiya and Support for Benghazi Rebels”. The group launched an offensive in the early summer of 2016 along the axis Ajdabiya-Benghazi, briefly taking control of a couple of villages, and claiming to have downed a helicopter (other reports indicate technical failure) of the Libyan National Army (LNA) in the area of Magrun, killing three French intelligence operatives (DGSE) and three Libyans who were aboard the aircraft.

Since the US airstrike in Ajdabiya, “not much has filtered regarding the fate of Abu Iyadh, at times said to be hiding in Derna, however, in mid-2016, it was reported that Abu Iyadh managed to leave Libya for northern Mali, where he resided under the protection of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM)”.

Abu Iyadh is not the only Tunisian jihadist militant who has sought refuge in the Sahel. In November 2016, Nigerien security forces arrested his associate, Wannes Ben Hassine Fékih, and later extradited him to Tunisia. Fékih, accused of planning the Bardo attack in Tunis, was condemned to ten years in prison. Another former senior Ansar al-Sharia member, Moez Fezzani, met a similar fate in Sudan. His arrest was made possible through exchanges of intelligence between Italian, Sudanese, and Libyan authorities, and likewise extradited to Tunisia for prosecution, where he, two months after his return, was sentenced to thirty years in prison.

 About the author: Scott Bernstein is the CEO of Global Security International. A worldwide organization that fights terrorism in many countries headquartered in the Research Triangle of North Carolina. He has extensive experience as a counter-terrorist Operative. He is also a Military and Law Enforcement Trainer. He is an author and available as a Consultant and keynote Speaker. In addition to his LinkedIn profile, you can also interact with Scott on his LinkedIn group https://bit.ly/1LMp2hj.

#Al Qaeda #Al Qaida #Terroism #ISIS #Libya #Militants