Libya Rebel Commander: "An Islamist? Moi?"

Dan from New York:

This should quiet all the bitter skeptics who said Obama’s Libyan adventure would wind up trading Qaddafi for something worse.

Libya Rebel Commander Plays Down Islamist Past

September 02, 2011 | Associated Press



TRIPOLI, Libya -- The rebels' Tripoli military commander, a former leader of an Islamic militant group that sent fighters to Iraq and Afghanistan, insisted Friday that the new Libya will shun extremism and won't become a breeding ground for terrorism.



The commander, Abdel Hakim Belhaj, said he was detained in 2004 in Malaysia and sent to a secret prison in Thailand where he was tortured by CIA agents. Then he was sent to Libya and jailed for seven years by Muammar Qaddafi's regime.



But Belhaj, 45, played down his Islamist past, seeking to allay concerns about his emergence as a prominent figure in the Western-backed Libyan opposition movement.



He insisted he holds no grudges against the West because of the shared goal of ousting Qaddafi... Belhaj was a leader in the now dissolved Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which was deemed a terror group by the U.S. But he said he refused to join Al Qaeda because he disagreed with its ideology of global jihad, or holy war, and wanted to focus on ridding Libya of Qaddafi.



He said he never agreed with Al Qaeda's ideology of global jihad, or holy war, but only wanted to focus on ridding Libya of Qaddafi... Qaddafi, in courting the West in recent years, has insisted Al Qaeda would gain influence in Libya unless he remained in power...



Belhaj dismissed those concerns... "We never have and never will support what they call terrorism," he said.



"Libya is a moderate Muslim country," he said. "We are a simple people with a simple cultural makeup and we have never had extremist ideas. And if there ever were any they were an exception."

Why, this is the "Arab Spring", so what could possibly go wrong?