Al-Qaeda planted its flag on the Benghazi Courthouse in October. The terror group warned locals:
“Whomever speaks ill of this flag, we will cut out his tongue.”
From the video: According to one Benghazi resident, Islamists driving brand-new SUVs and waving the black al Qaeda flag drive the city’s streets at night.
Now there are reports that Al-Qaeda is sending more members to Libya.
The role of Islamic extremists in Libya is raising fears among experts.
FOX News reported:
The Arab Spring may quickly become an Islamist Winter in Libya, reads a new report circulated among federal law enforcement and written for policymakers on Capitol Hill.
An advance copy of the report entitled “A View to Extremist Currents In Libya” and obtained by Fox News, states that extremist views are gaining ground in the north African country and suggests a key figure emerging in Libya formerly tied to al Qaeda has not changed his stripes.
“Despite early indications that the Libyan revolution might be a largely secular undertaking … the very extremist currents that shaped the philosophies of Libya Salafists and jihadis like (Abd al-Hakim) Belhadj appear to be coalescing to define the future of Libya,” wrote Michael S. Smith II, a principal and counterterrorism adviser for Kronos LLC, the strategic advisory firm that prepared the report…
…Libya was considered important to al Qaeda because of its geographic proximity to Egypt and its perceived ability to “affect the jihadist political situation in Egypt.”
For this reason, among others, al Qaeda’s new leader Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri in April 2011 called on jihadis to prepare to mount an insurgency against any Western forces in Libya.
“I would like to alert my Muslim brothers in Libya, Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia and the rest of the lands of Islam that if the United States and the NATO forces interfere in Libya, it will be necessary for their neighbors … and the rest of the Muslims to go forth to fight all of the mercenaries of (Muammar) al-Qaddafi and the crusaders of NATO,” he said, according to a translation provided by Kronos.
