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Terrific. Former Gitmo Detainee & Afghan Jihadists Lead Libyan Rebels
Posted by Jim Hoft on Saturday, April 2, 2011, 7:48 PM

Two former Afghan Islamists and a former Gitmo detainee are leading the rebels in Libya.
The US is reportedly training and arming the rebels in Libya.

Former Gitmo detainee Sufyan Ben Qumu was released from Libyan prison last year.

Libyan Islamic Fighting Group walk out upon their release from Abu Salim prison in Tripoli March 24, 2010. (Islamization Watch)

It took Ben Qumu less than a year to lead rebels against the regime.

The Wall Street Journal reported:

Two former Afghan Mujahedeen and a six-year detainee at Guantanamo Bay have stepped to the fore of this city’s military campaign, training new recruits for the front and to protect the city from infiltrators loyal to Col. Moammar Gadhafi.

The presence of Islamists like these amid the opposition has raised concerns, among some fellow rebels as well as their Western allies, that the goal of some Libyan fighters in battling Col. Gadhafi is to propagate Islamist extremism.

Abdel Hakim al-Hasady, an influential Islamic preacher and high-school teacher who spent five years at a training camp in eastern Afghanistan, oversees the recruitment, training and deployment of about 300 rebel fighters from Darna.

Mr. Hasady’s field commander on the front lines is Salah al-Barrani, a former fighter from the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, or LIFG, which was formed in the 1990s by Libyan mujahedeen returning home after helping to drive the Soviets from Afghanistan and dedicated to ousting Mr. Gadhafi from power.

Sufyan Ben Qumu, a Libyan army veteran who worked for Osama bin Laden’s holding company in Sudan and later for an al Qaeda-linked charity in Afghanistan, is training many of the city’s rebel recruits.

Both Messrs. Hasady and Ben Qumu were picked up by Pakistani authorities after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and were turned over to the U.S. Mr. Hasady was released to Libyan custody two months later. Mr. Ben Qumu spent six years at Guantanamo Bay before he was turned over to Libyan custody in 2007.

They were both released from Libyan prisons in 2008 as part of a reconciliation with Islamists in Libya.

More… During his military service Abu Sufian Ibrahim Ahmed Hamuda Bin Qumu was frequently disciplined for drug and alcohol offenses, absences without leave, and attempted rape.