A senior anti-Qaddafi rebel commander says he was among the IHH-terrorists on the Mavi Marmara who attacked IDF navy commandoe.
“I was wounded on the Mavi Marmara and spent nine days in an Israeli prison,” Number Two rebel commander Mahdi al-Harati told the Spanish daily ABC last month. Al Harati was second in command to Abdul-Hakim Belhadj, who now heads the Tripoli Military Council.
A Spanish ABC reporter said he found Al Harati and two other rebel fighters in Syria, where they said they were helping their “Syrian revolutionary brothers.”
The IHH crew on the Mavi Marmara brutally assaulted Israeli commandos as they approached the deck of the ship after rappelling down a rope from a hovering helicopter. Virtually unarmed except for less-than-lethal guns and personal handguns, the commandos were clubbed, knifed and shot, and three of them were kidnapped until the rest of the Navy unit was able to overcome the terrorists, nine of whom were killed.
Al-Harati’s links with the IHH, the anti-Assad rebellion and the war against Muammar Gaddafi are further evidence that the Arab Spring uprisings are replacing brutal regimes with more brutality.
Be’er Sheva-based journalist P. David Hornik noted on FrontPage Tuesday, “Belhadj also has an interesting pedigree, having been in phone contact with the leader of the 2004 Madrid train bombings just weeks before they were perpetrated…”
“The fact that the likes of al-Harati…was not only on the ship but [also] wounded in the fighting is further substantiation [of his links to terrorism]. So, for that matter, is Hamas terror-master Ismail Haniyeh’s visit with the relatives of the Mavi Marmara casualties on Monday.”
As fro Belhadj, he “is the historical leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), the Libyan affiliate of al-Qaeda, according to the National Review’s John Rosenthal, who disclosed the Spanish ABC interview.
Spanish media several months ago reported that Belhadj ran a jihadist training camp in Afghanistan and according to one rebel terrorist, had “a direct line to Osama bin Laden” but “never shared Osama’s strategy.”
