Libyan updateLibya arrests 50 in connection with Benghazi consulate attack
The Libyan government and the Obama administration differ on the origins of the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi; Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, insisted that attack in Benghazi was similar to the attacks on embassies in Cairo and Sana, and that all were reminiscent of previous spontaneous unrest among Muslim in response to perceived slights toward the Prophet Mohammed; the Libyan president, announcing the arrest of about 50 in connection to the attack, said the attack was planned “by foreigners” affiliated with al Qaeda; among those arrested are militants from Mali and Algeria
A truck burns at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi // Source: almakan.co.il
Libyan president Mohammed el-Megarif said over the weekend that his security services have concluded that al Qaeda, or an organization affiliated with al Qaeda, was behind the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi last week, and attack in which four Americans were killed.
Megarif also said, in an appearance on CBS News, that Libya’s security agencies have arrested about fifty people in connection with the attack.
The Libyan president told NPR that over the past three months, his security services have noticed a sharp increase in the number of Islamists foreigners who infiltrated into Libya to bolster the ranks of indigenous militant organizations.
He said that there are several foreigners among those arrested in the last few days, among them militants from Mali and Algeria.
“It was planned, definitely, it was planned by foreigners, by people who entered the country a few months ago, and they were planning this criminal act since their arrival,” he said. The suspects were connected to al Qaeda, or its “affiliates and maybe sympathizers.”
“We don’t know what are the real intentions of these perpetrators,” he said. “They entered Libya from different directions. Some of them definitely from Mali and Algeria.”
Magrif said that the perpetrators, plans in hand, were just waiting for the right opportunity, an opportunity provided to them by the growing unrest in the Arab world over the anti-Muslim movie, a short trailer of which was shown on YouTube. “The idea that this criminal and cowardly act was a spontaneous protest that just spun out of control is completely unfounded and preposterous,” Megarif told NPR. “We firmly believe that this was a pre-calculated, pre-planned attack that was carried out specifically to attack the U.S. Consulate.”
Megrif’s explanation of what happened differs from the explanation offered by the Obama administration. Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the UN., appeared on four different Sunday TV shows, arguing that the events in Benghazi were a spontaneous reaction to the anti-Muslim movie, not a planned attack.
“The best information and the best assessment we have today is that this was not a pre-planned, pre-meditated attack,” she said on Fox News Sunday. “What happened initially was that it was a spontaneous reaction to what had just transpired in Cairo as a consequence of the video. People gathered outside the embassy and then it grew very violent. And those with extremist ties joined the fray and came with heavy weapons, which unfortunately are quite common in post-revolutionary Libya, and that then spun out of control.”
Rice said the FBI is investigating the incident, and that past week’s turmoil was similar to earlier unrest caused by publication of what Muslims believed to be blasphemous depictions of the Prophet Mohammed. She mentioned the 1989 release of the book Satanic Verses, which forced author Salman Rushdie into hiding for several years, and the more recent violent reactions to cartoons appearing in a Danish paper, which depicted the Prophet Mohammed in an unfleattering way.
“So this is something we’ve seen in the past, and we expect that it’s possible that these kinds of things could percolate into the future,” Rice said on CNN’s State of the Union.
Fox News notes that the intensity of the anti-American fervor initially caught U.S. leaders by surprise, but in the days since the Benghazi attack the Obama administration has deployed military units to shore up security in hotspots, and used both private and public diplomacy to call for calm and urge foreign governments to protect American interests in their countries.
While Rice argued that the attacks on the U.S. embassies in Cairo, Sana, and Benghazi were a spontaneous reaction to the movie, others in the administration are careful to say that it is “still unclear how much of the violence was spontaneously triggered by the film and how much of it was spurred on by anti-American militants using it as a tool to grow and enrage the crowds,” Fox New reports.
