Libyan rebel commander admits his fighters have al-Qaeda links

'Al Qaeda Fighters Join Libyan Rebels'
Posted by Lew Rockwell on March 26, 2011 10:06 AM

Above is the current Drudge headline, points out Johnny Strike, which links to this story. But that bothers no warmonger.After all, the ideological tendency called Al Qaeda was founded by the US to fight the Russians in Afghanistan. The CIA assembled every fundamentalist fighter it could find, under the leadership of, among others, Osama bin Laden. Carter and Reagan called them mujahideen, which we were told meant "freedom fighters." Actually it means jihadists, those fighting a "holy," that is, a defensive, war. This concept has been twisted by Muslim states and others, of course, just as "just war" is misused in the West. (Thanks to Mustafa Akyol) But Al Qaeda soldiers taking up arms against Gadaffi bothers no one who supports the empire, because all that matters is taking the imperial side. It is the same reason that Stalin was proclaimed good guy when he fought with FDR (the millions he killed forgiven), and a bad guy (who had a Gulag!) when Truman started the Cold War. It wasn't that long ago that Bush II was praising Gadaffi as a valuable ally in the latest imperial excursion -- latest before Libya, that is -- the "war on terror." Ah, propaganda.

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Libya News
Libyan rebel commander admits his fighters have al-Qaeda links
Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, the Libyan rebel leader, has said jihadists who fought against allied troops in Iraq are on the front lines of the battle against Muammar Gaddafi's regime.
By Praveen Swami, Nick Squires and Duncan Gardham 5:00PM GMT 25 Mar 2011

In an interview with the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore, Mr al-Hasidi admitted that he had recruited "around 25" men from the Derna area in eastern Libya to fight against coalition troops in Iraq. Some of them, he said, are "today are on the front lines in Adjabiya".

Mr al-Hasidi insisted 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".

His revelations came even as Idriss Deby Itno, Chad's president, said al-Qaeda had managed to pillage military arsenals in the Libyan rebel zone and acquired arms, "including surface-to-air missiles, which were then smuggled into their sanctuaries".

Mr al-Hasidi admitted he had earlier fought against "the foreign invasion" in Afghanistan, before being "captured in 2002 in Peshwar, in Pakistan". He was later handed over to the US, and then held in Libya before being released in 2008.

US and British government sources said Mr al-Hasidi was a member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, or LIFG, which killed dozens of Libyan troops in guerrilla attacks around Derna and Benghazi in 1995 and 1996.

Even though the LIFG is not part of the al-Qaeda organisation, the United States military's West Point academy has said the two share an "increasingly co-operative relationship". In 2007, documents captured by allied forces from the town of Sinjar, showed LIFG emmbers made up the second-largest cohort of foreign fighters in Iraq, after Saudi Arabia.

Earlier this month, al-Qaeda issued a call for supporters to back the Libyan rebellion, which it said would lead to the imposition of "the stage of Islam" in the country.

British Islamists have also backed the rebellion, with the former head of the banned al-Muhajiroun proclaiming that the call for "Islam, the Shariah and jihad from Libya" had "shaken the enemies of Islam and the Muslims more than the tsunami that Allah sent against their friends, the Japanese".

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8407047/Libyan-rebel-commander-admits-his-fighters-have-al-Qaeda-links.html