Libyan Islamic Fighting Group

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File:Abdelhakim Belhadj1.jpg Abdelhakim Belhadj, formerly leader of LIFG and currently of ISIS in Libya
Armed insurgent group in Libya backed to the hilt by Britain for many years.

Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) is a Western-backed insurgent group that participated in the 2011 overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi and allied itself with the Transitional National Council through LIFG leader Abdelhakim_Belhadj.

Previously, the LIFG had organised the anti-Gaddafi protests outside the Libyan embassy when WPC Yvonne Fletcher was shot and killed in April 1984, and was reported to be operating in Yemen in the 1990s.

Later, the LIFG was involved in radicalising and training the Manchester Arena bomber Salman Abedi and his brother Hashem. Britain deproscribed the LIFG in November 2019.

Aligned with Al Qaeda

In April 2011, Michel Chossudovsky wrote:

Both the LIFG as an entity as well as its individual members are categorised by the UN Security Council as terrorists. According to the US Treasury:

“The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group threatens global safety and stability through the use of violence and its ideological alliance with al Qaeda and other brutal terrorist organisations”.

Concepts are turned upside down. Both Washington and NATO, which claim to be waging a “War on Terrorism”, are supporting a “pro-democracy movement” integrated by members of a terrorist organisation.

In a cruel irony, Washington and the Atlantic Alliance are acting in defiance of their own anti-terrorist laws and regulations. Moreover, support under “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) to opposition forces integrated by terrorists is implemented pursuant to UN Security Council Resolution 1973, which is blatant violation of UNSC Resolution 1267. The latter identifies the Al-Jama’a al-Islamiyyah al-Muqatilah bi-Libya, the Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), as a terrorist organisation.

In other words, the UN Security Council is in clear violation not only of the UN Charter but of its own resolutions.

Meeting Syrian rebels

On 27 November 2011, the Telegraph in an article titled, “Leading Libyan Islamist met Free Syrian Army opposition group” reported:

Abdelhakim Belhadj, head of the Tripoli Military Council and the former leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, “met with Free Syrian Army leaders in Istanbul and on the border with Turkey,” said a military official working with Mr Belhadj. “Mustafa Abdul Jalil (the interim Libyan president) sent him there.”

The meetings came as a sign of a growing ties between Libya’s fledgling government and the Syrian opposition. The Daily Telegraph on Saturday revealed that the new Libyan authorities had offered money and weapons to the growing insurgency against Bashar al-Assad.

Mr Belhadj also discussed sending Libyan fighters to train troops, the source said. Having ousted one dictator, triumphant young men, still filled with revolutionary fervour, are keen to topple the next. The commanders of armed gangs still roaming Tripoli’s streets said yesterday that “hundreds” of fighters wanted to wage war against the Assad regime.

Revealed once again is a convenient intersection of terrorist and US-British interests – this time in pursuit of regime change in Syria in the wake of successful US-UK backed regime change in Libya.