The trouble is that Belhaj’s record as a Gaddafi adversary just might be too impressive. Belhaj is a founding member and former leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), which is listed by both the U.S. State Department and the British Home Office as an international terrorist organization. Several past or present LIFG members have held prominent positions in al Qaeda, including operations chief Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, who was recently killed in a CIA drone attack. The LIFG is hardly Libya’s only militant Islamist force, but it’s easily the biggest and very possibly the most dangerous.
Belhaj himself makes no secret of having met Osama bin Laden in the late 1980s, back when they were both fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. Even so, he denies any sympathy for al Qaeda’s aims. “Meeting with a person with a specific ideology doesn’t mean I agree with that ideology,” Belhaj told The Daily Beast. “I didn’t go to Afghanistan to fight with bin Laden. I went to Afghanistan to support the Afghans and fight with them.”…
There’s no need to worry, Belhaj insists: “Our goal is to have a free civilian government. It’s something we’ve never had in more than 40 years.” Maybe so, but there have been signs that some Libyan hardliners have other ideas…
Other Libyans express confidence that democracy will prevail. “Islamists are 99 percent moderate,” says NTC member Alamin Belhaj (no relation to the rebel commander), a founding member of Libya’s branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. “I know most of them. There are very few who are extremist. These people are hated even among the normal people. Their ideology is not acceptable in the normal stream.”
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