On April 21, 2011, the London-based Saudi daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, citing Noman Benotman, a former senior commander in the Libyan Islamist group Al-Jama'a Al-Islamiyya Al-Muqatila ("The Libyan Fighting Group") who is now a senior analyst at the Quilliam counter-extremism think tank in London, said that Al-Muqatila had never joined Al-Qaeda and that Al-Qaeda had no presence in Libya.
Following is a summary of Benotman's main points as presented by Al-Sharq Al-Awsat:
'Abd Al-Mun'im Mukhtar Al-Madhoun, a member of Al-Muqatila's shura council recently killed in Libya by forces loyal to Mu'ammar Al-Qadhafi, never joined Al-Qaeda although he did fight in Afghanistan. Benotman said this was true despite the fact that two other former Al-Muqatila members joined Al-Qaeda in 2007, namely, Abu Al-Laith Al-Qasimi Al-Libi (killed by a U.S. strike in 2008) and Abu Yahya Al-Libi, and despite the fact that the latter consequently appeared in a video with Ayman Al-Zawahiri, in which he announced that Al-Muqatila had joined Al-Qaeda.
SUPPORT OUR WORK
Since its founding in 1988, Al-Qaeda has not succeeded in establishing any cells in Libya, and its several attempts to recruit mujahideen in Libya in the early 1990s and during the Second Gulf War ended in utter failure, including the arrest of its operatives there. In reality, "Al-Qaeda has no presence within Libya and is not welcome there."
In 1990, when he was 20, Mukhtar Al-Madhoun set out to wage jihad against the former Soviet Union in Afghanistan, where he joined Al-Muqatila. Some 500 other Libyans also went to Afghanistan to participate in jihad, including Noman Benotman, Abu Yahya Al-Libi, Abu Al-Mundhir Al-Sa'di, and 'Abdallah Al-Sadeq. Mukhtar Al-Madhoun spent three years fighting in Khost and Kandahar under the command of Jalal Al-Din Haqqani, who, having received U.S. support at the time, is now one of its greatest enemies in Afghanistan
After 9/11, Mukhtar Al-Madhoun fled to Iran, where he was detained and placed under house arrest along with some 100 Islamist families, being released only in 2010. Despite his opposition to Al-Qadhafi's regime, he encouraged Al-Muqatila to engage in dialogue with the regime and to draft ideological revisions. In 2009, after three years of negotiations with the regime, Al-Muqatila renounced violence and issued a communiqué in which it announced that it had no ties to Al-Qaeda, in the past or at present. As part of these negotiations, the Libyan regime released more than 100 Al-Muqatila prisoners over recent years
The single Al-Muqatila member still in the Boslim Prison in Libya is its head military chief, Mustafa Qunayfid, also known as Abu Al-Zubair, all the other senior chiefs having been released and now serving a central role in the war against extremism in Libya, among theme Abu Al-Mundhir Al-Sa'di, 'Abdallah Al-Sadeq, Idris Al-Libi – Abu Yahya Al-Libi's older brother – and Abu Hazem Khaled Al-Sharif, Al-Muqatila's second in command
Following Mukhtar Al-Madhoun's return to Libya, he joined the rebels, operating under the leadership of the Libyan National Transitional Council as commander of the 'Omar Al-Mukhtar Regiment. Benotman stressed that "the Islamists who were released from the Libyan prisons joined the rebels as individuals rather than as a group or organization," and that they were fighting alongside the rebels "solely to liberate Libya."
