Former Guantanamo detainee implicated in Benghazi attack
January 7, 2014
U.S. officials suspect that a former Guantanamo Bay detainee played a role in the attack on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, and are planning to designate the group he leads as a foreign terrorist organization, according to officials familiar with the plans.
Militiamen under the command of Abu Sufian bin Qumu, the leader of Ansar al-Sharia in the Libyan city of Darnah, participated in the attack that killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, U.S. officials said.
Witnesses have told American officials that Qumu’s men were in Benghazi before the attack on Sept. 11, 2012, according to the officials. It’s unclear whether they were there as part of a planned attack or out of happenstance. The drive from Darnah to Benghazi takes several hours.
The State Department is expected to tie Qumu’s group to the Benghazi attack when it designates three branches of Ansar al-Sharia, in Darnah, Benghazi and Tunisia, as foreign terrorist organizations in the coming days.
In 2007, Qumu was released from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and sent to Libya, where he was detained. The Libyan government released him in 2008.
He and two other men, militia leaders Ahmed Abu Khattala and Seif Allah bin Hassine, will be identified as “specially designated global terrorists,” a determination that allows U.S. officials to freeze their financial assets and bar American citizens and companies from doing business with them.
The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the developments.
About a dozen criminal complaints have been filed in the Benghazi case, with more expected. U.S. intelligence officials have said that several militias had a hand in the attack. Some of the individuals charged are from Darnah, although it’s not clear if they are tied to Qumu’s group. Khattala has already been named in a criminal complaint.
The FBI declined to comment Tuesday.
U.S. officials are also investigating whether any of the people involved in the Benghazi raid had a role in the killing of Ronnie Smith, an American schoolteacher who was gunned down while jogging in the city last month.
Lawless conditions in eastern Libya have frustrated U.S. efforts to investigate the attack in Benghazi and capture those responsible. U.S. officials scrapped a plan to snatch Khattala in Benghazi for fear that American action could trigger unrest and destabilize the Libyan government.
Read More: The Washington Post
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So Now that there appears to be some evidence tying Abu Sufian Ibrahim Ahmed Hamuda Bin Qumu to the Benghazi attack....take a look at this article from 2011 by the NY Times:
Libyan, Once a Detainee, Is Now a U.S. Ally of Sorts
By ROD NORDLAND and SCOTT SHANE
Published: April 24,2011
For more than five years, Abu Sufian Ibrahim Ahmed Hamuda bin Qumu was a prisoner at the Guantánamo Bay prison, judged “a probable member of Al Qaeda”
by the analysts there. They concluded in a newly disclosed 2005
assessment that his release would represent a “medium to high risk, as
he is likely to pose a threat to the U.S., its interests and allies.
Today, Mr. Qumu, 51, is a notable figure in the Libyan rebels’ fight to oust Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi,
reportedly a leader of a ragtag band of fighters known as the Darnah
Brigade for his birthplace, this shabby port town of 100,000 people in
northeast Libya. The former enemy and prisoner of the United States is
now an ally of sorts, a remarkable turnabout resulting from shifting
American policies rather than any obvious change in Mr. Qumu.
He was a tank driver in the Libyan Army in the 1980s, when the Central Intelligence Agency
was spending billions to support religious militants trying to drive
Soviet troops out of Afghanistan. Mr. Qumu moved to Afghanistan in the
early 1990s, just as Osama bin Laden and other former mujahedeen were violently turning against their former benefactor, the United States.
He was captured in Pakistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks,
accused of being a member of the militant Libyan Islamic Fighting
Group, and sent to Guantánamo — in part because of information provided
by Colonel Qaddafi’s government.
“The Libyan Government considers detainee a ‘dangerous man with no
qualms about committing terrorist acts,’ ” says the classified 2005
assessment, evidently quoting Libyan intelligence findings, which was
obtained by The New York Times. “ ‘He was known as one of the extremist
commanders of the Afghan Arabs,’ ” the Libyan information continues,
referring to Arab fighters who remained in Afghanistan after the
anti-Soviet jihad.
When that Guantánamo assessment was written, the United States was
working closely with Colonel Qaddafi’s intelligence service against
terrorism. Now, the United States is a leader of the international
coalition trying to oust Colonel Qaddafi — and is backing with air power
the rebels, including Mr. Qumu.
The classified Guantánamo assessment of Mr. Qumu claims that he suffered
from “a non-specific personality disorder” and recounted — again citing
the Libyan government as its source — a history of drug addiction and
drug dealing and accusations of murder and armed assault.
In 1993, the document asserts, Mr. Qumu escaped from a Libyan prison,
fled to Egypt and went on to Afghanistan, training at a camp run by Mr.
bin Laden. At Guantánamo, Mr. Qumu denied knowledge of terrorist
activities. He said he feared being returned to Libya, where he faced
criminal charges, and asked to go to some other country where “You (the
United States) can watch me,” according to a hearing summary.
Nonetheless, in 2007, he was sent from Guantánamo to Libya and released the next year in an amnesty for militants.
Colonel Qaddafi has cited claims about Mr. Qumu’s past in statements
blaming Al Qaeda for the entire Libyan uprising. American officials have
nervously noted the presence of at least a few former militants in the
rebels’ ranks.
The walls of buildings along the road into Darnah are decorated with the
usual anti-Qaddafi and pro-Western slogans, in English and Arabic,
found all over eastern Libya. But there are notable additions: “No
Qaeda” and “No to Extremism.”
Darnah has reason to be touchy. The town has a long history of Islamic
militancy, including a revolt against Colonel Qaddafi’s rule led by
Islamists in the mid-1990s that resulted in a vicious crackdown.
Activists from here are credited with starting the Libyan Islamic
Fighting Group, which later announced that it was affiliating with Al
Qaeda, and which sent militants like Mr. Qumu to fight in Afghanistan.
Most famously, though, Darnah has a claim to being the world’s most
productive recruiting ground for suicide bombers. An analysis of 600
suicide bombers in Iraq by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point
found that of 440 who listed their hometowns in a recruiting roster, 52
were from Darnah, the most of any city, with Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 40
times as populous, as the next biggest source, sending 51.
In addition to Mr. Qumu, local residents say the Darnah Brigade is led
by Abdul-Hakim al-Hasadi, another Libyan thought to be a militant who
was in Afghanistan during the Taliban’s rule, when Al Qaeda had training camps there.
Read More: NY Times
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View a copy of the Department of Defense Document Here
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