Ambassadors Stevens death leaves US short on Libya Milita recruits to fight in Syria

Ambassador Stevens helped cultivate fertile ground for recruiting Mercenaries to fight against the Assad’s regime in Syria. In the end blow-back from reckless CIA operations like his was his undoing… Phlipn

Libya convenes militias to take action against US ambassador’s killers
By Richard Spencer – 18 September, 2012 – The Telegraph

The new prime mininster, Mustafa Abushagur, and acting president, Mohammed Magarief, are understood to have called the meeting in response to pressure from President Barack Obama to take action.

The meeting will consider to what extent the attack was the work of local Islamist extremists, and how much it was co-ordinated with the “foreign elements” identified by Mr Magarief in interviews over the weekend, particularly members of Al-Qaeda from other parts of North Africa.

In a statement released on Tuesday, Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb, the North African branch of what is now often called a terrorist franchise, praised the killing of Chris Stevens at the consulate in Benghazi last Tuesday as “the best gift” and called for more American officials to die.

“We encourage all Muslims to continue to demonstrate and escalate their protests and to kill their (American) ambassadors and representatives or to expel them to cleanse our land from their wickedness,” it said.

The government and Benghazi leaders deny claims that the militias who run security in Benghazi are too fractured to seize the Islamist militants believed responsible for the attack.

“We have a better idea who was responsible, and we are now waiting for a government plan,” said Mohammed al-Gharabi, a leader with the Union of Revolutionary Committees which run security in Benghazi.

He said he was flying to Tripoli this morning for the meeting with the government, along with Fawzi Bukatif, the former deputy defence minister who is senior commander of the Union.

General Yousef Mangoush, the nominal head of the army in Benghazi, is also thought to be in Tripoli.

There has been no direct claim of responsibility for the killing from inside or outside Libya, and US officials are still saying that it was the result of a protest that either got out of hand or was hijacked by extremists.

But there is increasing evidence that it was a co-ordinated assault that had been planned in advance.

On Monday, a security guard wounded in the attack told The Daily Telegraph that there had been no demonstration before hand but the attack had come out of the blue. He said there was a single warning shot, and then hand grenades were lobbed over the wall, accompanied by heavy shooting from automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.

He said more than 30 men managed to charge the gates. “They were shouting, ‘Kill the bastards’,” he said, adding there were no religious or protest slogans.

He said they saw him and identified him as a Libyan defender of the consulate. “They said, ‘Kill the dog!'” Many different accounts have emerged from the chaos of the attack last Tuesday. Among those that now appear not to be true is the claim that the ambassador, Christopher Stevens, was dead when he was found in a secure room.

Video posted online yesterday appeared to show a group of civilians finding him and declaring he was still alive. “Allahu akbar,” they shout as one man declares he is breathing.

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