PoliticsLibya: Abu Sufian Qumu: Guantanamo AlQuaedist exposed by WikiLeaks, leads anti-democrats in Libyan revolution
The Telegraph London, UK (Apr27,2k11)
WikiLeaks:
Guantanamo detainee
is now Libyan rebel leader
A man who spent six years in Guantanamo is now a senior
figure in the Libyan rebels’ fight against Colonel Gadaffi.
In a newly disclosed file by WikiLeaks that was written in 2005, Abu Sufian
Ibrahim Ahmed Hamuda Bin Qumu was identified as a “probable member
of Al Qaida and a member of the African Extremist Network”.
Ibrahim Ahmed Hamuda Bin Qumu was identified as a “probable member
of Al Qaida and a member of the African Extremist Network”.
The revelation will raise concerns about the range of factions fighting Gadaffi in Libya, some of whom have been associated with Al Qaeda.
Qumu was previously a member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, but allegedly left the proscribed group in 1998 to join the Taliban.
In the report, US investigators classified Qumu as a “medium to high” risk because he was “likely to pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies”.
Qumu was imprisoned in Libya for ten years for alleged “murder, physical assault, armed assault and
distributing narcotics”, but escaped in 1993 and fled to Afghanistan.
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refWrite editorial comment: The intro to the news article above, by Holly Watt, was published by London, England's Telegraph newspaper. The complete article with related reports deserves wide reading. To my mind, the import of the Al-Quaeda presence, a leading presence, in the Libyan revolution in no way invalidates the Libyan revolution, but it does confirm what some conservative Christians and others have been warning about all the ongoing revolutions in the MidEast. There is a risk that AlQuaeda types, even some who were incarcerated in Quantanamo prison for war criminals, will swarm into any given MidEastern revolutionary scene, take over the national revolt, and impose not democracy but theocratic tyranny on the nation. While I fully synpathize with the situation where the USA, unlike any other Western country, is damned if it supports the previous dictators of those countries, and damned it it doesn't, by opening up the prospect of a potentially worse tyranny emerging.
But there's a matter of judgment involved for all Western countries, indeed for all countries which truly value freedom: In the case of the USA, it was more than time for Mubarak to be driven from the scene in Egypt; his tyrannies were many, but the Muslim Brotherhood's potential takeover of Egypt was allowed to serve as his excuse to make them the only political opposition with any clout. We shall see whether the MB takes over the country in the upcoming elections. Or whether the junta now in control will revert to form and determine the outcome by eonsconcing one of their fellas. The democratic forces that have emerged in Egypt now deserve the support of all freedom loving regimes thru-out the world.
Likewise in Libya. Already a clear three-way conflict has come into view with the WikiLeaks documents publicly exposing the leading presence of Abu Sufian Qumu in the country. Another report says 1,000 AlQuaedists have swarmed into the country and back Qumu's leadership. These places the democratic forces, which until now, have had little clear leadership, either military or political. The Western and other freedom-loving forces must not only render Qadaffi's regime powerless (a big enuff task in itself) but also render extinct the Al Quaeda forces that want to exploit the democratic revolution, substitute their jihadist-Islamicist tyranny for Qadaffi's, and impose a ruthlessly repressive taliban-type Sharia law on Libya's population.
In the meantime, a fourth very major front of the war for democracy in Arab Muslim contries has opened with the uproar that has resounded from Syria.
-- Politicarp
