Al-Qaeda Commander Ordered Sharia Law In Libya

NATO’s bombing campaign has paved the way for an extremist, arcane and brutal system of justice

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Tuesday, October 25, 2011

National Transitional Council leader Mustafa Abdul-Jalil’s announcement that Libya would follow Sharia law was mandated by Abdel Hakim Belhaj, the former Al-Qaeda commander whose LIFG terrorist organization killed U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Jalil promised to revoke Gaddafi’s ban on polygamy and return Libya to Islamic banking laws during a triumphant speech on Saturday, declaring, “Libyan laws in future would have Sharia, the Islamic code, as its basic source.”

Sharia law is viewed by many as an arcane and inherently brutal system of justice, with harsh punishments for those deemed to have broken its moral code, including torture and execution for sins such as adultery, homosexuality and robbery. The law also stifles free speech as it criminalizes criticism of Islam, the Quran, and the prophet Muhammad.

Even as Jalil made the announcement of a return to Sharia, the decree that bodies should be buried immediately under Islamic law was flouted as people lined up to see the dead corpses of Gaddafi and his son Mutassim lying in a meat freezer.

However, the move to implement Sharia law was not a decision made by the NTC, reports Israeli intelligence source DebkaFile, it was ordered by Abdel Hakim Belhaj, the former Al-Qaeda commander whose Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, with the aid of NATO’s bombing campaign, now controls strategic areas of the country.

It was generally believed in Tripoli that the strongmen ruling the capital, Abdel Hakim Belhaj, ex-al Qaeda, and Ismail and Ali al-Sallabi, heads of the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood, only granted Abdul-Jalil’s wish for a big liberation rally in Benghazi after he agreed to declare the new Libya a Sharia state.

But after the grand celebration is over, DEBKAfile’s sources report, the transitional leader will be little more than a figurehead. Even now, he is confined in Benghazi by the three strongmen, who control most parts of the capital, and have not given him permission to move the seat of the interim government to Tripoli.

Abdul-Jalil is only allowed to pop over to receiving visiting foreign dignitaries.

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t

The notion that Belhaj and his terrorist fighters are the real source of power in Libya tallies with previous reports that Belhaj dismissed suggestions he hand over power to the NTC, having declared himself “Commander of the Tripoli Military Council.”

As we previously documented, Belhadj is the front man for the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), designated as a terrorist organization by the US State Department. Belhadj was captured by the CIA in Malaysia in 2003 and extradited to Libya where Colonel Gaddafi had him imprisoned. Belhadj is a committed jihadist who fought with the Taliban against U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Libyan rebel leader Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi also admitted that Belhadj’s LIFG fighters were the second-largest cohort of foreign fighters in Iraq.

A 2007 West Point report indicated that the Benghazi-Darnah-Tobruk area of Libya is a world capital for Al-Qaeda or mujahideen suicide bomber recruitment. Author Webster Tarpley details this intelligence in his excellent analysis piece, The CIA’s Libya Rebels: The Same Terrorists who Killed US, NATO Troops in Iraq. The West Point report detailed how the LIFG and Al-Qaeda had formed an “increasingly co-operative relationship”.

Since the LIFG seized key areas of the country, black Libyans have been subjected to torture, imprisonment and execution at the hands of Belhadj’s fighters and other Libyan rebel groups.

The Debka report concludes that, “A primary objective of the Arab Spring as promoted by the United States and the Western Alliance is the substitution of those dictatorships by fundamental Muslim regimes whose leaders quite frankly usher Sharia law in to the liberated countries.”

While the establishment media grandstands about “freedom” and “democracy” being brought to Libya and other Middle Eastern countries as a result of the “Arab Spring,” and NATO-backed regime change, in reality the west has deliberately installed radical regimes who if anything will become more brutal than the tyrants they have replaced. This in turn builds tension throughout the region and lays the pretext for additional US and Israeli intervention further down the line.

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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show.