After Consulate Attack, Libya Struggles to Get Its Story Straight
After Consulate Attack, Libya Struggles to Get Its Story Straight
by Jamie Dettmer Sep 17, 2012 4:45 AM EDT
One leader says there was a preplanned plot from abroad, and 50 people have been arrested in the Benghazi siege. Not so, says the new prime minister. What is going on?
Another day and more clashing explanations from different Libyan officials about who was behind the assault on the consulate in Benghazi that left U.S. ambassador Christopher Stevens dead along with three other Americans. Not only are the accounts of what happened and who was involved contradictory, so too now are the number of arrests made and whether they are real arrests or just questionings of people known to have been at the protest before the shooting started.
Blaming the attack on foreigners linked to al Qaeda, Mohammed Magarief, president of the newly installed General National Congress, told CBS’s Face the Nation that about 50 people had been arrested so far. “It was definitely planned by foreigners, by people who entered the country a few months ago and they were planning criminal acts since their arrival,” he said. Some of the foreigners came from Mali and Algeria.
This came as news to Libya’s prime minister, Mustafa Abushugar, who was elected the day after the attack. Just a few hours before, his office told The Daily Beast: “So far we really believe that this was a violent demonstration mainly against the movie (The Innocence of Muslims) that swung out of control. The protesters saw on television what was happening in Egypt and decided to have their own protest. We have no evidence at all that this was al Qaeda.”
The prime minister’s spokesman, Mohamed Al Akari, said members of the militia Ansar al-Sharia were still seen as chief suspects, but he did not discount the possible involvement of the Imprisoned Omar Abdul Rahman Brigades, a shadowy pro-al Qaeda group, although not an affiliate of the terror group, which in May claimed responsibility for an attack on the International Red Cross office in Benghazi and in June detonated a small explosive outside the U.S. consulate.
More + video:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/17/after-consulate-attack-libya-struggles-to-get-its-story-straight.html
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