The Washington Post reports
that U.S. officials suspect Sufian Ben Qumu, an ex-Guantanamo detainee,
“played a role in the attack on the American compound in Benghazi,
Libya, and are planning to designate the group he leads as a foreign
terrorism organization.” Ben Qumu is based in Derna, Libya and runs a
branch of Ansar al Sharia headquartered in the city.
U.S.
officials have found that some of Ben Qumu’s militiamen from Derna
“participated in the attack” and “were in Benghazi before the attack
took place on Sept. 11, 2012.”
Ben Qumu was fingered early on as a suspect in the Benghazi attack, but his name dropped out of much of the reporting on the assault for more than one year.
In November 2013, however, THE WEEKLY STANDARD reported:
“U.S. intelligence officials believe that Sufian Ben Qumu, a Libyan
ex-Guantánamo detainee, trained some of the jihadists who carried out
the attacks in Benghazi.” Ben Qumu, TWS reported, “has longstanding
connections with al Qaeda leadership.”
Ben Qumu’s biography is rich with al Qaeda links:
Ben Qumu is one of the original “Arab Afghans” who traveled to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets in the 1980s. In the years that followed the end of the anti-Soviet jihad, Ben Qumu followed al Qaeda to the Sudan and then, in the mid-to-late 1990s, back to Afghanistan and Pakistan. He was eventually arrested in Pakistan after the 9/11 attacks and transferred to the American detention facility at Guantánamo Bay.A leaked Joint Task Force Guantánamo (JTF-GTMO) threat assessment describes Ben Qumu as an “associate” of Osama bin Laden. JTF-GTMO found that Ben Qumu worked as a driver for a company owned by bin Laden in the Sudan, fought alongside al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, and maintained ties to several other well-known al Qaeda leaders. Ben Qumu’s alias was found on the laptop of an al Qaeda operative responsible for overseeing the finances for the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The information on the laptop indicated that Ben Qumu was an al Qaeda “member receiving family support.”
An August 2012 report published by the Library of Congress
in conjunction with the Defense Department, titled “Al Qaeda in Libya: a
Profile,” identified Ben Qumu as the possible “new face of al Qaeda in
Libya despite” his denial of an ongoing al Qaeda role. The report also
noted that Ben Qumu and his Ansar al Sharia fighters are “believed to be
close to the al Qaeda clandestine network” in Libya. According to the
report’s authors, that same network is headed by al Qaeda operatives who
report to al Qaeda’s senior leadership in Pakistan, including Ayman al
Zawahiri.
The reporting on Ben Qumu’s ties to the Benghazi attack directly refutes an account by David Kirkpatrick of the New York Times.
Kirkpatrick reported that “neither Mr. Qumu nor anyone else in Derna
appears to have played a significant role in the attack on the American
Mission, officials briefed on the investigation and the intelligence
said.”
The Post reports that, in addition to Ben
Qumu and Ansar al Sharia Derna, the branches of Ansar al Sharia in
Benghazi and Tunisia are going to be designated as terrorist
organizations by the State Department.
Two other individuals, Ahmed Abu Khattala and
Seifallah ben Hassine, are going to be added to the list of “specially
designated global terrorists.”
Seifallah Ben Hassine (a.k.a. Abu Iyad al Tunisi) is the head of Ansar al Sharia Tunisia, which assaulted the U.S. Embassy in Tunis just three days after the attack in Benghazi.
In its annual Country Reports on Terrorism, published in May 2013, the State Department noted
that Ben Hassine “was implicated as the mastermind behind the September
14 attack on the US Embassy,” which involved “a mob of 2,000 - 3,000”
people, “including individuals affiliated with the militant organization
Ansar al Sharia.”
The ties between Ben Hassine, Ansar al Sharia and al Qaeda are longstanding and well-established.
According to multiple published reports, Ben
Hassine relocated to Libya after the Tunisian government labeled Ansar
al Sharia a terrorist organization and cracked down on its operatives.
The Tunisian government has repeatedly alleged
that the Ansar al Sharia groups in Libya and Tunisia are tied to one
another, as well as al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).
The Post’s report concludes: “In addition
to Qumu and Khattala, American officials are eager to question Faraj al
Chalabi, a Libyan extremist who might have fled the country.”
As THE WEEKLY STANDARD reported on multiple occasions,
Chalabi is considered a key suspect by U.S. intelligence officials. Two
U.S. intelligence officials say Chalabi once served as a bodyguard for
Osama bin Laden and is suspected of brining materials from the compound
in Benghazi to senior al Qaeda leadership in Pakistan.
Thomas Joscelyn is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
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