Gazan Jihadists Promise To Produce Evidence Demonstrating Involvement In Plane Crash
Insiders in the group that represents ISIS in the Gaza Strip claimed to this reporter that the global jihadist group will soon release information purporting to show how it helped bring down the Russian passenger plane that crashed in Egypt, killing all 224 people on board.
One ISIS leader in Gaza said that “in the Russian plane operation our brothers used their brains more than their bullets or their explosives. It was part of a brains war.”
He spoke on condition of anonymity, citing specific ISIS instructions for all members of the global jihad group to refrain from putting out information concerning the attack for the time being.
Other ISIS ideologues in Gaza claimed the video circulating on the Internet purporting to show the final moments of the Russian jet is not authentic.
The Gazan ISIS ideologues fight under the same banner as their jihadist comrades in the neighboring peninsula, the group formerly known as Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, which claimed responsibility for the fatal plane crash.
Egypt and Russia have been quick to deny any possible terrorism link to the incident, which is being described as one of the deadliest Airbus crashes of the past decade.
In The Meantime, In Tripoli…
Mystery continues to swirl around the dramatic events that transpired at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli the night of the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on the U.S. special mission and CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya, 400 miles away.
In largely ignored previous testimony, Gregory Hicks, the former U.S. deputy chief of mission in Libya, recounted an astonishing scene in Tripoli in the minutes and hours after the initial attack in Benghazi.
Fearing the embassy might also come under attack, Hicks said staffers in Tripoli smashed hard drives with an ax and dismantled classified communications equipment. One female office manager was seen carrying ammunition and loading gun magazines as staff prepared to depart for a safe house.
Yet none of that was mentioned by either Hillary Clinton or her legislative questioners during last Thursday’s Benghazi hearing, even though the response by the Tripoli embassy was discussed.
The evacuate-and-destroy incident in Tripoli was also not mentioned in the State Department’s probe of the Benghazi attack. Nor was it previously reported in news accounts of the attack, which the Obama administration initially claimed resulted from popular protests against an anti-Muhammad video.
The U.S. facility in Tripoli was upgraded to embassy status in 2006, and the U.S. maintained an embassy there until Clinton temporarily shut it down during the 2011 revolution that toppled Muammar Khaddafi’s regime. In September 2011, after Khaddaffi fell, Clinton re-opened the Tripoli embassy.
Rep. Linda Sanchez, D-Calif., asked Clinton about security concerns at the embassy in Tripoli the night of the Benghazi attack.
Clinton’s response did not include mention of the Tripoli evacuation.
In testimony before Congress in May 2013, Hicks, who was the No. 2 at the Tripoli embassy the night of the attacks, described the frantic scene in the embassy.
In his testimony, Hicks said that about three hours after the attack began on the U.S. facility in Benghazi, the embassy staff in Tripoli noticed Twitter feeds asserting that the terror group Ansar al-Sharia was responsible. Hicks said there was also a call on the social media platform for an attack on the embassy in Tripoli.
“We had always thought that we were…under threat, that we now have to take care of ourselves, and we began planning to evacuate our facility,” he said.
“When I say our facility, I mean the State Department residential compound in Tripoli, and to consolidate all of our personnel…at the annex in Tripoli.”
