Rebel leader in Tripoli claims he was tortured by CIA as terror suspect

THE new Libya will have no place for terrorists or Islamic extremism, the rebel military commander in Tripoli has declared – despite the fact he himself once led an Islamic militant group and claims he was tortured by CIA agents at a secret prison seven years ago.

“We never have and never will support what they call terrorism,” Abdel Hakim Belhaj said yesterday in an interview.

Mr Belhaj was a leader in the now dissolved Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which sent fighters to Iraq and Afghanistan.

He said he was detained in 2004 in Malaysia and sent to a secret prison in Thailand, where CIA agents tortured him. Then he was sent by the United States to Libya and sentenced to death by Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi’s regime, before his release last year.

Mr Belhaj, 45, joined the rebellion against Col Gaddafi in February and is now a prominent figure in the Libyan opposition movement, seeking to allay concerns about his past.

In an interview at his headquarters at the sprawling military airport in central Tripoli, Mr Belhaj played down his Islamist ties. He said he refused to join al-Qaeda because he disagreed with its ideology of global jihad, or holy war, and wanted to focus on ridding Libya of Col Gaddafi.

He praised the West for supporting the rebels through Nato airstrikes and diplomatic efforts.

“The UN Security Council and the whole world stood by us in the cause and have helped us to get rid of Gaddafi,” he said.

Mr Belhaj burst on to the scene in the mountains west of Tripoli only in the last few weeks before the fall of the capital, as the leader of a brigade of rebel fighters.

“He wasn’t even in the military council in the western mountains,” said Othman Ben Sassi, a member of the National Transitional Council (NTC) from Zuwarah in the west. “He was nothing, nothing. He arrived at the last moment, organised some people, but was not responsible for the military council in the mountains.”

Then came the push on Tripoli, which fell with unexpected speed, and Mr Belhaj and his fighters focused on Col Gaddafi’s fortified Bab al-Aziziya compound, where they distinguished themselves as relatively disciplined fighters.

A veteran of the war in Afghanistan against the Soviets, Mr Belhaj has what most rebel fighters lacked – actual military experience. Yet he has still not adopted a military rank – unlike many rebels who quickly became self-appointed colonels and generals.

Last weekend, Mr Belhaj was voted commander of the Tripoli Military Council, a grouping of brigades of rebels involved in taking the capital, by the other brigades, a move that aroused criticism among liberal members of the NTC. But his appointment was strongly supported by Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, the council chairman, who said that, as Col Gaddafi’s former minister of justice, he got to know Mr Belhaj well during negotiations leading to his release from prison.

Mr Belhaj and other Islamist radicals made a historic compromise with the regime, one brokered by Saif Gaddafi, the son of Col Gaddafi seen then as a moderating influence.

Some council members said privately that allowing Mr Belhaj to become chairman of the military council in Tripoli was done partly to take advantage of his military expertise, but also to make sure political leaders had him under their direct control.

Many also say Mr Belhaj’s history as an Islamist is understandable because until this year, Islamist groups were the only ones able to struggle against Col Gaddafi’s repressive rule.

Mr Belhaj joined other Arabs in fighting Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s. He returned to Libya in the 1990s to join the rest of the Islamic Fighting Group in fierce confrontations with Col Gaddafi’s regime.

When he fled Libya in the mid-1990s, he moved from one country to the other, until he fell into the hands of the CIA.

He said agents blindfolded him, hung him from the wall and beat him on his back in Thailand. But he insisted he holds no grudges.

“Revenge doesn’t motivate me personally,” he said.

The Libya government freed Mr Belhaj and 33 others in March 2010. He agreed to renounce violence as part of an initiative by Col Gaddafi’s son, Saif al-Islam.

Col Gaddafi, in courting the West in recent years, insisted al-Qaeda would gain influence unless he remained in power.

Mr Belhaj dismissed those concerns.

“Libya is a moderate Muslim country,” he said. “We call and hope for a civil country that is ruled by the law, which we were not allowed to enjoy under Gaddafi. The religious identity of the country will be left up to the people to choose.

“The February 17th revolution is the Libyan people’s revolution, and no-one can claim it, neither secularists nor Islamists.”

Forty-two years of Col Gaddafi’s rule in Libya had, he said, taught him an important lesson: “No-one can make Libya suffer any more under any one ideology, or any one regime.”