"Likely" that government contacted Libya militant group associated with Arena bomber

[7evens]

This piece is over a year old. Not exactly surprising that it hasn't become public knowledge but, erm, wow. Has this popped up on the forum before? Please delete/move as appropriate if it has.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/revealed-uk-admits-contact-libyan-group-linked-manchester-bomber

LONDON - The UK government has admitted it is "likely" it was in communications with former members of an al-Qaeda-linked Libyan militant group linked to the Manchester bomber Salman Abedi and his family during the country's 2011 uprising against Muammar Gaddafi.

Following last May's Manchester Arena attack, which killed 22 children and adults, it emerged that Abedi, 22, the British-born son of exiled Libyan dissident, returned to the north African country in 2011 with his father to fight with factions linked to the former Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), alongside other anti-Gaddafi forces.

MEE revealed that British security services operated an “open door” policy that allowed Libyan exiles and British-Libyan citizens to join the 2011 uprising even though some had previously been subject to counter-terrorism control orders.

The rebels were also backed by NATO, with the UK, France and the US conducting air strikes targeting Gaddafi forces. Gaddafi himself was killed by militants following an air strike on a convoy in which he was travelling in October 2011.

But, for the first time, the government has admitted it was "likely" in contact with "former members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group", an organisation which was banned in the UK because of its links to al-Qaeda.

The LIFG was founded in 1995 by anti-Gaddafi Libyan fighters who had fought against the Soviet Union's occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, and the group had close contacts with the leaders of al-Qaeda, which also emerged out of the same fight.

The LIFG subsequently attempted to distance itself from al-Qaeda and condemned the targeting of civilians.

“During the Libyan conflict in 2011 the British Government was in communication with a wide range of Libyans involved in the conflict against the Gaddafi regime forces. It is likely that this included former members of Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and 17 February Martyrs Brigade, as part of our broad engagement during this time,” said Foreign Office minister for the Middle East Alistair Burt, in a written response to a parliamentary question, which was published just after MPs rose for their Parliamentary break at Easter.

The LIFG was reported to have disbanded in 2010 but its key leaders were still active in 2011 and many of its former members joined the 17 February Martyrs Brigade, one of the main anti-Gaddafi fighting forces as the revolution gathered pace in 2011.

Many volunteers from Manchester also fought for the 17 February Martyrs Brigade, including Ramadan Abedi, Salman Abedi's father, who was reportedly a former member of the LIFG.

Lloyd Russell-Moyle MP, who asked the question, said: "The Foreign Office has told me that it is 'likely' it had links to the Libyan rebel group for which the Manchester bomber fought."

He said the response left the government with "serious questions" to answer over whether it facilitated Abedi's travel to fight in Libya.

After his father returned to Libya in 2011 to fight for LIFG, Abedi reportedly travelled back and forth between his home and Manchester and Tripoli, and fought alongside his father during the school holidays.

Other reports indicate he was injured in 2014 in eastern Libya while fighting for an Islamist militant faction.

Fabian Hamilton MP, a member of Labour's shadow foreign office team, told MEE: “These revelations show that the British government must look more closely at who it supports and has communications with, not only in Libya, but across the world.

"The situation in Libya in 2011 was extremely complex, and still is today, with several different organisations claiming to represent the people of that country, while showing a willingness to take part in violence to meet their political ends.”

Following the Manchester attacks, several former Libyan rebel fighters now back in the UK told MEE that they had been able to travel to Libya with "no questions asked" and that "old-school LIFG guys" were allowed to travel to the country.

At the time, sources told MEE it appeared the government allowed the travel of Libyan exiles keen to fight against Gaddafi, including some whom it had earlier deemed to pose a potential security risk.

Raffaello Pantucci, director of international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), told MEE the revelations showed the “complexity” of the Libyan conflict. “If you are dealing with a situation when armed groups are the dominant forces, you are obliged to deal with them, but in a fluid situation, as was the case in Libya, you can find that someone who was an ally one day can produce conflict the next," he said.

Moazzam Begg, a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner and outreach director of human rights group Cage, who visited Libya in 2011, told MEE that the British government's use of and support for former members of the LIFG during the Libyan uprising was a "pretty open secret".

"There is no doubt that the very same people imprisoned and placed under control orders in the UK - based largely on secret evidence provided by Gaddafi regime - later left the UK to become leaders in the war against him," said Begg.

Begg pointed to the example one former LIFG exile in Birmingham who was placed on a control order in the UK but was subsequently appointed head of security for visiting foreign dignitaries by Libya's transitional government.

The official coordinated visits by British prime minister David Cameron, French president Nicolas Sarkozy, US secretary of state Hilary Clinton, and then-Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Begg told MEE.

'Seeking a hardline Islamic state'
The UK government listed the LIFG as a terrorist organisation in 2005, describing it as seeking to establish a "hardline Islamic state" and "part of the wider Islamist extremist movement inspired by al-Qaeda".

The US State Department has said elements of the LIFG had pledged loyalty to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda and designated the group a foreign terrorist organisation in 2004.

Former members of the LIFG deny that the group had any links with al-Qaeda and say it was committed only to removing Gaddafi from power.

In 2011, then-British prime minister David Cameron told parliament: "The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group was allied with al-Qaeda. It is not any more and has separated itself from that organisation."

A mural in Tripoli paying tribute to fighters from Manchester who joined the 17 February Martyrs' Brigade during Libya's revolution against Gaddafi (AFP)
The LIFG became a significant anti-Gaddafi force in Libya in the late 90s, until a government clampdown forced many members to flee - and many were granted refugee status in the UK.

But LIFG exiles found themselves under scrutiny in the UK following a rapprochement between the British and Libyan governments in 2004, which resulted in greater cooperation between the countries' security services.

According to documents retrieved from the ransacked offices of the Libyan intelligence agency following Gaddafi's fall from power in 2011, British security services cracked down on Libyan dissidents in the UK as part of a deal with Gaddafi, as well as assisting in the rendition of two senior LIFG leaders, Abdel Hakim Belhaj and Sami al-Saadi, to Tripoli where they allege they were tortured.

Belhaj later returned to Libya and was a leading figure in the uprising against Gaddafi, while another former Libyan exile subjected to a control order in the UK was later tasked with providing security for visiting dignitaries including Cameron, French president Nicolas Sarkozy and US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, MEE understands.

The Islamic State (IS) group, which was able to seize territory in Libya around the central city of Sirte as rival Libyan governments and militias emerged following the fall of Gaddafi, claimed responsibility for the Manchester bombing.

Salman Abedi is reported to have also had contact with jailed IS recruiter Abdalraouf Abdallah, another British-Libyan from Manchester who suffered paralysing injuries while fighting with the 17 February Martyrs Brigade in Libya.

Abdallah was convicted in 2016 of assisting others in committing acts of terrorism after facilitating and arranging for British men, including his brother, to travel to Syria to fight for IS.

A security source told MEE that officials were unable to comment on Abedi and his family members' travel in Libya, because of the active extradition request for Hashem Abedi, the brother of Salman Abedi.

Hashem Abedi, 20, was arrested in Libya shortly after his older brother blew himself up at the Manchester Arena, and UK authorities want him to return to the UK to face mass murder charges.

The Foreign Office declined to comment.

 

[7evens]

More information here.

https://thegrayzone.com/2018/08/01/libya-blowback-cia-uk-navy-manchester-suicide-bomber/

Seven years after NATO allied with Islamist insurgents and violently overthrew Libya’s government, plunging the oil-rich North African nation into a hellish chaos from which it still has not recovered, we are learning more and more about the disastrous blowback this war later unleashed back at home.

The Guardian has reported that the British Navy “rescued” Manchester Arena suicide bomber Salman Abedi in Libya in 2014 — three years before he massacred 22 people at a concert by the pop singer Ariana Grande.

What this Guardian article did not disclose is that the British government is even further implicated in this massive scandal.

Grayzone Project editor Max Blumenthal reported immediately after the May 22, 2017 suicide attack how Abedi’s father had fought in the al-Qaeda-linked extremist militia the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which has extensive ties to US and UK intelligence agencies and had been used to try to assassinate Libyan leader Moammar Qadhafi.


Salman Abedi and his family were part of a community of exiled anti-Qadhafi Libyan dissidents who were avowed members of the far-right LIFG militia.

In fact, during the 2011 NATO regime change war in Libya, Salman Abedi’s father Ramadan was one of numerous anti-Qadhafi Libyan dissidents who traveled to North Africa, with the knowledge of UK intelligence services, in order to fight to overthrow the Libyan government — with help from the American, British, and French militaries.

And weeks before his 2017 attack, Abedi had again returned to war-torn Libya. He likewise spent time fighting with extremist Salafi-jihadist rebels in Syria, many of whom have also enjoyed support from the US, UK, and their allies.

What Salman Abedi was doing when the British Navy rescued him in Libya in 2014 is not clear. The Guardian report indicated, “Abedi was being monitored by security services when he travelled to Libya, but his case was closed a month before his rescue.”

The horrific Manchester bombing is yet another example of a far-right extremist who was once supported by the US and UK later attacking our domestic populations.

One must not forget that Salafi-jihadist death squads in Afghanistan that later grew into al-Qaeda and the Taliban also first enjoyed support from the US in the 1980s.

And like Afghanistan, Libya is a case study for what the CIA dubbed “blowback.”

Libya: the real definition of blowback
There is some confusion about the meaning of blowback.

This case with Salman Abedi is instructive as it is a textbook example of the real definition of blowback, as it was originally used by the CIA.

Many people — mostly well-meaning liberals — use the term “blowback” to suggest that “terrorism begets terrorism.” They argue that one of the main reasons people from Muslim-majority countries commit acts of terrorism is because of anger about US violence in the Middle East.

This view is at least partly correct: US violence in the Middle East is significant; generates considerable anger in the region and surrounding areas; is effectively used in recruitment by so-called “terrorist organizations”; and is often a stated and plausible motivation (along with things like domestic Western racism towards Muslim immigrants) for people who commit “lone wolf” terrorist attacks in the West.

But this is not the way the term was initially used by the CIA. The original meaning of the term implies something that is in some ways more disturbing.

The relationship between groups like al-Qaeda and countries like the US is not simply one of vendetta, a symmetric cycle of violence where each US bombing of al-Qaeda causes an al-Qaeda bombing of the US, and vice versa.

A key pillar of US war policy in the Middle East, throughout the Cold War and up to today, has been the support of groups like and including al-Qaeda — far-right shock troops that can effectively combat independent progressive anti-imperialist forces in the region.

In many conflicts, including Syria, the US has been much less involved as a direct combatant, and has rather acted more as a funder, armory, trainer, and international mediator for armed Islamist rebel groups.

Of course this can be “contradictory,” with different US-backed groups fighting each other, bombing the same people you are arming. But calling it contradictory almost misses the point: the US supports these groups with the intent of doing permanent harm to these societies, preventing their governments from pursuing independent political and economic paths, and ultimately breaking up their states and institutions.

The broad, senseless destruction is a policy objective. It supports these far-right extremist groups for the same reasons Israel supports Saudi Arabia: to undermine or liquidate the domestic secular left and opposition to US imperialism.

However, the CIA realized right away — at least in the 1980s, perhaps by the ’70s, decades before 9/11 — that the price for these policies would be “blowback”: if you keep funding terrorist attacks by less-than-reliable allies who often use anti-Western rhetoric to recruit, eventually you will get occasional terrorist attacks in the West.

This risk always made a lot of CIA liberals uncomfortable, but they did their job. They informed policymakers of the dangers involved with the policy, and policymakers decided it was worth the cost.

The CIA was reportedly wary about the Bill Clinton administration’s policy of supporting foreign Islamist militias in Bosnia and later Kosovo. Yet Clinton overruled them because the goal of permanently destroying Yugoslavia, dismantling its independent socialist government, and annexing Kosovo as a military base was, for him, worth the cost.

Libya is only the latest example of blowback. Analyzing American and British intelligence and military operations in Libya — in 2011 and in the decades before — is useful for informing the public about the nature and consequences of these policies.

The aftermath of these operations illustrate blowback in the original sense of the term, not in the most common way it is used.

Meanwhile, the extreme damage these policies have unleashed is only just beginning to be understood.

 

[BertTrautmann'sParachute]

Its a matter of public record that the CIA contacted Theresa May's Home Office (at the time) saying that these guys were planning something in Manchester.

 

[7evens]

Its a matter of public record that the CIA contacted Theresa May's Home Office (at the time) saying that these guys were planning something in Manchester.

I feel like the public should somehow be angrier be about this. Although I suppose this explains why there's a push for the investigation to be made into an inquiry, so they can bury this stuff deeper under piles of paper and bureaucracy.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-49608387

 

[Machiavelli]

I posted lots about this at the time of the bombing, all backed up with conclusive evidence (not from conspiracy sites), nobody batted an eyelid.

Sadly I’m not sure you’ll get much of a response from this thread neither.

 

[Trevor Morley's Tache]

I feel like the public should somehow be angrier be about this. Although I suppose this explains why there's a push for the investigation to be made into an inquiry, so they can bury this stuff deeper under piles of paper and bureaucracy.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-49608387

Manchester Arena should never have happened, but it did. The security services got it wrong big time.

Our security services are stretched beyond belief. They simply do not have the resources to follow every single piece of intelligence and everything is a judgement call.

To prevent all terrorist attacks they would have to be correct 100% of the time. Terrorist only have to get it right once.

Ripping the security services apart after every successful terrorist attack is counterproductive, as it does more harm than good in most cases.

 

[gandalfthebrave]

Nothing surprises me about this case. After all, the Royal Navy gave Abedi a lift from Tripoli to Malta where he got a flight back to the UK. Absolutely nuts to be honest.

It does take some serious mental gymnastics, however, for MI5 to be blamed for an Islamic terror attack.

We all owe those guys a heck of a lot for every plot they foil, the majority of which we never even hear about. As the previous poster said, MI5 have to get lucky every time. Abedi only had to get lucky the once, and look what happened.