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Call links Benghazi attack to al-Qaida figure
Shortly after the attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi last September, a phone call was placed from the area.Whoever made the call was excited. "Mabruk, Mabruk!" he repeated, meaning "Congratulations" in Arabic. Two sources with high-level access to Western intelligence services have told CNN the call was made to a senior figure in al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM. There is no proof that the call was specifically about the attack, in which U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed, but the sources say that is the assumption among those with knowledge of the call. One of the sources says the phone call was discovered when a Western intelligence service trawled through intercepts of communications made in the wake of the attack. That source told CNN that the call was made specifically to Moktar Belmoktar, leader of an al-Qaida faction based in northern Mali. CIA officials told CNN they had no comment on whether any call had been intercepted. If the call was made and subsequently detected, it could fuel an already partisan debate in Washington over the Obama administration's initial public characterization of the Benghazi attack, and what information U.S. intelligence officials had about who was involved. Critics say initial administration comments did not reflect the true intelligence about the incident, and were an attempt by the administration to avoid tying it to terrorism. Posted by: tipper 2013-03-05 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=363552 |