In October 2011 Al-Qaeda or an offshoot group planted its flag on the Benghazi Courthouse. 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 shouting, “Islamiya, Islamiya! No East, nor West!”
On June 6, 2012, the US Consulate in Benghazi was bombed.
Today Al-Qaeda said the deadly attack at the US Consulate in Benghazi was in response to its leader’s death.
The Daily Telegraph reported:
AL-Qaeda said the deadly attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya was in revenge for the killing of the network’s number two Sheikh Abu Yahya al-Libi, SITE Intelligence Group reported.
“The killing of Sheikh Abu Yahya only increased the enthusiasm and determination of the sons of (Libyan independence hero) Omar al-Mokhtar to take revenge upon those who attack our Prophet,” said al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula said in a statement, quoted by the US-based monitoring group.
Al-Qaida’s Yemen-based offshoot did not claim direct responsibility for Tuesday’s attack on the US consulate in Benghazi that killed the US ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, and three other Americans.
But it stressed that “the uprising of our people in Libya, Egypt and Yemen against America and its embassies is a sign to notify the United States that its war is not directed against groups and organisations … but against the Islamic nation that has rebelled against injustice.”
The statement comes four days after al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri issued a video eulogising Libi, his late deputy and propaganda chief who was killed in a drone strike in June.
Mohammed al-Megaryef, the head of Libya’s national assembly, said today that the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi was planned and “meticulously executed.”
