Box 1: Ramadan Abedi

Abedi’s father Ramadan was a member of Libya’s secret service under Qadafi but fled the regime with his mother in 1991.⁹ They went first to Saudi Arabia in 1991 and in 1992 moved to London after applying for asylum.¹⁰ Ramadan Abedi Ramadan was part of the broad network of opponents in the UK who supported Islamist anti-Qadafi aims.¹¹ After Qadafi was overthrown, the Abedi family moved to Manchester but Ramadan largely settled back in Libya, with the rest of the family coming and going between Tripoli and Manchester.¹²

Box 2: The plot to assassinate Qadafi, 1996.¹⁹

According to former MI5 officer and whistleblower David Shayler, the episode began when a Libyan military intelligence officer approached MI6 with a plan to overthrow Qadafi. The Libyan, codenamed ‘Tunworth’, proposed establishing links with the LIFG. Shayler asserts that he was told by an MI6 officer, David Watson, that in Christmas 1995 he, Watson, had supplied Tunworth with $40,000 to buy weapons to carry out the assassination plot and that similar sums were handed over at two further meetings. A secret MI6 cable dated December 1995 — leaked in 2000 and published on the internet — revealed MI6’s knowledge of an attempt to overthrow Qadafi in a coup led by five Libyan colonels scheduled for February 1996. The cable also noted that one Libyan officer and twenty military personnel were being trained in the desert for their role in the attack, and that “the plotters had already distributed 250 Webley pistols and 500 heavy machine guns among their sympathizers”, who were said to number 1,275 people, including students, military personnel and teachers.

The plot went ahead in February 1996 in Sirte, Qadafi’s home city, but a bomb was detonated under the wrong car. Six innocent bystanders were killed, and Qadafi escaped unscathed. Annie Machon, Shayler’s partner and a former MI5 officer, writes that, by the time MI6 paid over the money to Tunworth, Osama Bin Laden’s organization was already known to be responsible for the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing, and MI5 had set up G9C, “a section dedicated to the task of defeating Bin Laden and his affiliates”.

US intelligence sources later told the Mail on Sunday newspaper that MI6 had indeed been behind the assassination plot and had turned to the LIFG’s leader, Abu Abdullah Sadiq, who was living in London. The head of the assassination team was reported as being the Libya-based Abdal Muhaymeen, a veteran of the Afghan resistance. A spattering of other media investigations confirmed the plot while a BBC film documentary broadcast in August 1998 was told that the Conservative government ministers then in charge of MI6 gave no authorisation for the operation and that it was solely the work of MI6 officers. This contradicted the earlier claim by then Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, that MI6 involvement in the plot was “pure fantasy”. Equally, the government’s denial of knowledge of the plot was decisively contradicted by the leaked cable, which showed that civil servants in the Permanent Secretary’s Department, GCHQ, MI5 and the MoD were all aware of the assassination attempt some two months before it was carried out. It is inconceivable that none of them would have informed their ministers.

Box 3: The LIFG and Britain

The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group was banned in Britain in 2005 after Blair’s ‘deal in the desert’ with Qadafi in 2004, when Blair agreed to crack down on Libyan dissidents in the UK.²⁴ But in 2009, Qadafi struck a peace deal with the LIFG following which the Brown government released the LIFG dissident from UK control orders. At the same time, the leaders of the LIFG, most of whom were in jail in Libya, distanced themselves from al-Qaeda and condemned terrorist attacks on civilians.²⁵ As we show below, however, the LIFG retained connections with al-Qaeda despite formally distancing itself from the group.

Box 4: Islamists in the Libyan Opposition²⁹

Britain provided a range of support to the rebel Libyan leadership, which was grouped in the National Transitional Council (NTC), an initially 33-member self-selected body of mainly former Qadafi ministers and other opposition forces, formed in Benghazi in February 2011 to provide an alternative government. The NTC’s military forces were led by various former Libyan army officers, but Islamist elements with links to al-Qaeda were also prominent. Two former mujahidin who had fought in Afghanistan led the military campaign against Qadafi’s forces in Darnah, to the east of Benghazi, for example. Abdel Hakim al-Hasidi, an influential Islamist preacher who spent five years at a jihadist training camp in eastern Afghanistan, oversaw the recruitment, training and deployment in the conflict of around 300 rebel fighters from Darnah. Both al-Hasidi and his field commander on the front lines, Salah al-Barrani, were former members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG).

It was also reported that Sufyan Ben Qumu, a Libyan army veteran who worked for Osama bin Laden’s holding company in Sudan and later for an al-Qaeda-linked charity in Afghanistan, ran the training of many of Darnah’s rebel recruits. Qumu spent six years at Guantanamo Bay before he was turned over to Libyan custody in 2007; he was released, along with al-Hasidi, from a Libyan prison in 2008 as part of Libya’s reconciliation with the LIFG.³⁰ Al-Hasidi, who had fought against the US in Afghanistan in 2001, had been arrested in Pakistan in 2002 and turned over to the US, imprisoned probably at the US base at Bagram, Afghanistan, and then mysteriously released. The US Deputy Secretary of State, James Steinberg, told Congressmen he would speak of al-Hasidi’s career only in a closed session.³¹

Other commentators recognised the Islamist nature of some of the rebels. Noman Benotman, a former member of the LIFG who had fought the Soviets in Afghanistan, estimated that there were 1,000 jihadists fighting in Libya.³² Sir Richard Dearlove observed that the rebel stronghold of Benghazi was “rather fundamentalist in character” and Admiral James Stavridis, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, said that US intelligence had picked up “flickers” of terrorist activity among the rebel groups; this was described by senior British government figures as “very alarming”.³³ Shadow foreign secretary Douglas Alexander said in parliament that since there was evidence of the presence of al-Qaeda-linked forces among the rebels, Britain should “proceed with very real caution” in arming them. In response, Foreign Secretary William Hague downplayed the concern, saying that

“Of course we want to know about any links with al-Qaeda, as we do about links with any organisations anywhere in the world, but given what we have seen of the interim transitional national council in Libya, I think it would be right to put the emphasis on the positive side”.³⁴

In mid-March 2011, when the Qadafi regime was still clinging to power in Tripoli, Libyan authorities paraded in front of the world’s media a British citizen captured in Libya and branded an Islamic terrorist. Salah Mohammed Ali Aboaoba said he was a member of the LIFG and had moved from Yemen to Britain in 2005, where he stayed until 2010, having been granted asylum, living with his family in Manchester and raising funds for the LIFG.³⁵

Box 5: Qatar’s role and British support

In April 2011, The Telegraph reported that “Britain will urge Arab states to train and lead Libya’s rebels, with former British military personnel in line to play a central role in the escalation of the international intervention”. The key role was to be played by Qatar and the United Arab Emirates who “will be asked to put military trainers into Libya to transform the disparate rebels into a coherent fighting force”. The Telegraph noted that the British government was proposing using “former British personnel could be used as trainers and ‘force multipliers’”. And that: “Former members of the Special Air Service, Special Boat Serve and other elite British regiments are frequently employed by private military companies and Middle Eastern regimes as ‘advisers’ for their own armed forces”. The Telegraph noted that Britain was already supplying the rebels with “non-lethal” communications equipment to help them co-ordinate their units.³⁶

The Times reported in June 2011 that “Britain and France are using Qatar to bankroll the Libyan rebels”. The reason was that NATO airstrikes failed to dislodge the Libyan leader while the rebels lack the firepower and military discipline to take advantage on the ground. The Times noted that “Britain and France are relying on Doha in a bid to tip the balance”, according to a senior western diplomat, who was quoted as saying: “We need to reinforce military pressure. It has to bite on the ground. The Qataris are doing what needs to be done.” A security source in the Gulf also told The Times that British and French officials discussed selling arms to Qatar with a view to Doha passing them on to Benghazi.³⁷

UK covert forces were deployed to Libya to support the rebels. Britain sent military advice into eastern Libya to make contact with opposition leaders.³⁸ Indeed, it was reported that “dozens” of British special forces soldiers and officers from MI-6 were working inside Libya by March 2011.³⁹

General David Richards, then Chief of the Defence Staff, recently told a Parliamentary enquiry that Britain “had a few people embedded” with the rebel forces, saying that they were “in the rear areas” and “would go forward and back”.⁴⁰ In March 2011, it was reported that a suspected British intelligence and special forces unit, had been caught near Benghazi. A senior member of Benghazi’s revolutionary council said: “They were carrying espionage equipment, reconnaissance equipment, multiple passports and weapons”.⁴¹

British special forces working alongside others, including Qatar in the final advance on the Gadhafi regime. British forces assisted rebel units by “helping them get better organised to conduct operations” and to “improve their tactics”, a NATO official said.⁴²

Qatar was a major financial backer of the Libyan rebels, providing them with a massive $400 million worth of support, much of which was provided to the Islamist radicals. Moreover, Qatar also sent hundreds of troops to fight on the frontline and to provide infantry training to Libyan fighters in the western Nafusa mountains and in eastern Libya.⁴³ It secretly supplied anti-tank weapons to the Libyan rebels.⁴⁴

Much of Qatar’s support went to the so-called 17 February Martyrs Brigade, one of the most influential rebel formations led by Abdel-Hakim Belhaj, a leading member of the LIFG who became the rebel military commander in Tripoli.⁴⁵ The group had been hired to protect the US consulate in Benghazi, but largely failed to show up on the evening of the attacks on the embassy in 2012.⁴⁶ Another group supported by Qatar was an Islamist militia in Benghazi known as Rafallah al-Sehati that had relatively Western-friendly leaders but extremists in its ranks. The extremists later broke away to form Ansar al-Shariah, the militant group that played a role in the death of the American ambassador, J. Christopher Stevens.⁴⁷

Britain is reported to have approved of Qatari arms supplies to the opposition.⁴⁸ The Obama administration also secretly gave its blessing to arms shipments to Libyan rebels from Qatar.⁴⁹ The New York Times reported:

“Within weeks of endorsing Qatar’s plan to send weapons there in spring 2011, the White House began receiving reports that they were going to Islamic militant groups”.

They were “more antidemocratic, more hardline, closer to an extreme version of Islam” than the main rebel alliance in Libya, said a former Defense Department official’.⁵⁰ Qatar’s chief-of-staff, Major-General Hamad bin Ali al-Atiya, later said: “We acted as the link between the rebels and NATO forces”.⁵¹ Qatar also played a key role alongside Britain in the ‘Libya contact group’ that coordinated policy against the Qadafi regime; the first meeting of the group, in April 2011, for example, was convened by Qatar and co-chaired by Britain in Doha.⁵²

As the New York Times reported: ‘The weapons and money from Qatar strengthened militant groups in Libya, allowing them to become a destabilising force since the fall of the Qaddafi government”.⁵³ Indeed, some of Qatar’s arms were subsequently moved from Libya to militants in Syria and Mali.⁵⁴

Box 6: The LIFG’s links to al-Qaeda and ISIS in Iraq before 2011

According to insurgent personnel records captured by US forces in Sinjar, Iraq, in 2006, LIFG had established early connections during the war in Iraq with the precursor organisation to ISIS. The US Army’s Combating Terrorism Centre (CTC) at West Point found in 2007 that LIFG had achieved a “unification” with al-Qaeda evident in “its apparent decision to prioritise providing logistical support to the Islamic State of Iraq.” Over 100 Libyans had joined al-Qaeda in Iraq or ISIS between 2006 and 2007.⁵⁷ In 2011, the CTC’s analysis of the ‘Sinjar records’ confirmed “a real surge in the number” of Libyan foreign fighters joining al-Qaeda in Iraq in 2007.⁵⁸

Also in 2011, Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, a Libyan rebel leader who headed up security under the NATO-backed National Transitional Council in the city of Derna, confirmed that Libyans who had fought with al-Qaeda against US forces in Iraq had returned to topple Qadafi. He told an Italian daily how he had personally recruited 25 Libyans from Derna to fight coalition troops in Iraq. Some of them, he said, are “today are on the front lines in Adjabiya”, a coastal city in north-central Libya which saw some of the heaviest fighting against Qadafi’s forces. Al-Hasidi insisted that his fighters “are patriots and good Muslims, not terrorists” but added that the “members of al-Qaeda are also good Muslims and are fighting against the invader”.⁵⁹

A June 2008 State Department cable from the US embassy in Tripoli corroborated the ‘Sinjar records’ and further confirmed a direct connection between LIFG fighters returning to Libya from the jihad with al-Qaeda in Iraq against US forces, and noted their aspiration to use their training to eventually topple Qadafi. The document, written by Ambassador Christopher Stevens — who was killed in the 2012 attack on the US consulate in Benghazi — cites evidence that eastern Libyans were “sending young Libyans to fight in Iraq.” Combating US forces “represented a way for frustrated young radicals to strike a blow against both Qadhafi and against his perceived American backers.”⁶⁰

The document notes that this mindset had a long history:

“A number of Libyans who had fought and in some cases undergone ‘religious and ideological training’ in Afghanistan, Lebanon and the West Bank in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s had returned to eastern Libya… in the mid to late 1980’s.”

The same individuals were, the cable assesses, pushing forward:

“a deliberate, coordinated campaign to propagate more conservative iterations of Islam, in part to prepare the ground for the eventual overthrow by the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) of Muammar Qadhafi’s regime, which is ‘hated’ by conservative Islamists.”⁶¹

Box 7: Arming the Syrian jihad

Document releases under FOIA from the Pentagon and Department of State show that the CIA was well aware of how weapons from anti-Qadafi rebels in Benghazi were covertly shipped to Islamist rebels in Syria by the Gulf states and Turkey.⁶³

A September 2012 Pentagon Defence Intelligence Agency document confirmed that the Gulf states and Turkey, with Western support, were supporting Syrian rebel groups consisting of “the Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI [al-Qaeda in Iraq].” Al-Qaeda in Iraq’s role among “the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria” was noted in the context of anticipating that the support would lead to the creation of a “Salafist Principality” in eastern Syria. The document even predicted the possibility that al-Qaeda in Iraq’s main vehicle, ISI, “could also declare an Islamic State through its union with other terrorist organisations in Iraq and Syria.”⁶⁴

The same powers that were involved in supplying Libya’s rebels, particularly Qatar, were active in Syria. Around the time that the DIA report circulated in the intelligence community, classified US intelligence assessments made available to President Obama and senior policymakers showed that most Saudi and Qatari arms were going to “hard-line Islamic jihadists, and not the more secular opposition groups”.⁶⁵

In 2014, a senior Qatari official revealed that Qatar and Saudi Arabia had for years provided economic and military assistance primarily to both al-Qaeda’s Syrian arm, Jabhat al-Nusra, and to ISIS.⁶⁶

A secret memo written for then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in August 2014 (which appeared on the WikiLeaks website in 2016) noted that the Saudi and Qatari governments “are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL [ISIS] and other radical Sunni groups in the region”.⁶⁷

Saudi Arabia’s neighbour Qatar, the world’s only other predominantly Wahhabi state with whom Theresa May’s government has recently signed large commercial deals, may have been the biggest funder of the Syrian rebels, with some estimates suggesting the amount may be as much as $3 billion.⁶⁸

While this does not justify labelling all the Syrian rebels as jihadists, it explains why the more secular, democratic forces among the rebels have often been supplanted by hardline Islamist forces.