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Ansar Al-Sharia leader Mohammed Al-Zahawi almost certainly dead
[Libya Herald] There is now increasing certainty that Mohammed Al-Zahawi, the leader of Ansar al-Sharia
...a Salafist militia which claims it is not part of al-Qaeda, even though it works about the same and for the same ends. There are groups of the same name in Libyaand Yemen, with the Libyan versions currently most active. Tunisia's Shabaab al-Tawhid started out an Ansar al-Sharia and changed its name in early 2014. It still uses the old name now and then, probably because the stationery's not all used up and the web site hasn't expired yet...
in Libya, has died of wounds sustained in an air strike 11 days ago.

Reliable sources have told the Libya Herald that they believe that Zahawi died in hospital in Turkey last Thursday. After he was hit, he was initially taken to Ajdabiya for two days of treatment. He was then transferred to Misrata by ambulance and finally flown to Turkey where he died. It was originally thought that Zahawi had been taken to Sirte's Abin Sina Hospital.

Sources maintain that four days ago Zahawi's body was flown back to Misrata where he was buried. Heavy security was reportedly in place at the Ansar leader's funeral.

Zahawi had been the leader of Ansar al-Sharia since its inception in April 2012, initially as a predominately humanitarian organization. However,
there's more than one way to skin a cat...
he was also the figurehead of the organization as it started to employ brutal violence to achieve its aim of an Islamist state in Libya.

He was the leader of the group during the September 11 attack in 2012 on US diplomatic facilitates in Benghazi in which Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed. Ansar was heavily implicated in the incident and was subsequently condemned as a terrorist organization by the United States.

There was no official response from Ansar when rumours of Zahawi's death first began circulating. The group was equally tight-lipped when it was reported this June that he had been killed in fighting near Bouatni. It was left to officials at Jalaa Hospital to say that although he had been injured in the neck, he had not died.

Two days prior to sustaining the injuries that eventually killed him, Zahawi pledged in an online message that Ansar and its Islamist allies in the Benghazi Revolutionaries' Shoura Council (BRSC) would soon have the whole of Benghazi under their control.

The Ansar leader was born in 1968 and was ipmrisoned in Abu Saleem under the Qadaffy regime for his Islamist views. Before that he was a musician.
Posted by: Fred 2014-10-23
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=402566