An American staff member of the U.S. consulate in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi has died following fierce clashes at the compound, Libyan security sources said on Wednesday.
"One American staff member has died and a number have been injured in the clashes," Abdel-Monem Al-Hurr, spokesman for Libya's Supreme Security Committee, said, adding that he did not know the exact number of injured and could not say what the cause of death was.
An armed mob protesting over a film they said offended Islam, attacked the US consulate in the Libyan city of Benghazi on Tuesday and set fire to the building, witnesses reported.
The attack happened on the same day as a similar group of hardliners waving black banners attacked the US embassy in Cairo and tore down the US flag, but it was not immediately clear if the two incidents were coordinated.
The protests came on the eleventh anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001, when US cities were targeted by hijacked planes.
"Demonstrators attacked the US consulate in Benghazi. They fired shots in the air before entering the building," Libya's deputy interior minister, Wanis al-Sharif Sharif, who is in charge of the country's eastern region, told AFP.
"Dozens of demonstrators attacked the consulate and set fire to it," said a Benghazi resident, who only gave his name as Omar, adding that he had seen the flames and heard shots in the vicinity.
Contacted by AFP, a US State Department official in Washington said US officials were still seeking information about the situation in Benghazi.
Asked whether the attack in Libya and the earlier demonstration against the US mission in Egypt could be connected, the official said it was unclear yet if the protests had been coordinated.
Another Libyan witness said armed men had closed the streets leading up to the consulate, among them ultra-conservative Salafists.
The Libyan incident came as thousands of Egyptian demonstrators tore down the Stars and Stripes at the US embassy in Cairo and replaced it with a black Islamic flag, similar to one adopted by several militant groups.
Nearly 3,000 demonstrators gathered at the embassy in protest over a film deemed offensive to the Prophet Mohammed which was produced by expatriate members of Egypt's Christian minority resident in the United States.
Replies
Al-Qaeda Murders U.S. Ambassador and Staff in Libya
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
September 12, 2012
A terrorist group responding to an anti-Islamic film produced in the United States has killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, and three of his staff members.
The attack occurred in the al-Qaeda stronghold of Benghazi and was carried out by “al Qaeda-linked gunmen” belonging to Ansar al-Sharia (Partisans of Sharia), according to Reuters.
“The American ambassador and three staff members were killed when gunmen fired rockets in their direction,” a Libyan official in Benghazi said.
As historian Webster Tarpley and others noted during the orchestrated overthrow of Libya, the so-called rebels supported by the United States and NATO consisted largely of al-Qaeda jihadists. In March of 2011, Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi the leader of the Libyan rebels “who trained and hobnobbed with Osama bin Laden at the Khost terrorist training camp in Afghanistan,” admitted his fighters were linked to al-Qaeda.
In February of 2011, AFP reported that al-Qaeda had established an Islamic emirate in Derna, in eastern Libya, headed by a former US prisoner at Guantanamo Bay. “They have an FM radio station and have begun to impose the burqa” and have “executed people who refuse to cooperate with them,” Khaled Khaim told the news agency.
“This gaggle of fanatics, psychotics, and criminals is billed by the CIA media as an effective ruling elite for the future democratic governance of Libya,” writes Tarpley. “In reality, the Benghazi rebel council, heavily larded with al-Qaeda terrorists, could only preside over the descent of the country into a chaos of tribalism, warlords, and criminal syndicates which would spell the end of civilization itself in the area. Precisely this appears to be the goal of US policy, and not just in Libya.”
Reuters mentions that the Obama administration “supported the Libyan insurgency [al-Qaeda] with funds, weapons and training” but fails to note the al-Qaeda connection.
In addition to “chaos of tribalism, warlords, and criminal syndicates” presiding in Libya, the war-ravaged failed state is now a foothold for al-Qaeda, the CIA-created nemesis and perpetual enemy that feeds the national security state and its military-industrial appendage. The murder of ambassador Stevens will feed more grist into the war on terrorism propaganda mill and will be exploited as an excuse to destabilize and attack more countries on the bankster hit list in the Middle East and Africa.
Was U.S. Ambassador Lynched?
Attack on U.S. Consulate illustrates disastrous outcome of Obama’s “humanitarian” intervention in Libya
Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
Despite initial reports suggesting he died in a rocket attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, photos appear to indicate that U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens was killed by a lynch mob, illustrating the disastrous consequences of the Obama administration’s military intervention in Libya – arming some of the very same men who carried out today’s attack.
“The US ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, has been killed in a rocket attack in the eastern city of Benghazi along with three other embassy staff, the White House confirmed on Wednesday,” reports France 24.
However, images released in the hours after the attack show Stevens’ body being paraded around by a mob. The body appears to show signs of torture.
Subsequent reports speculated that Stevens’ car was attacked as he and the three other personnel attempted to escape from the Consulate. The other embassy staff were shot while Stevens’ died of “suffocation,” suggesting he was lynched and physically attacked by the mob.
The incident is being portrayed by the establishment media as a reaction to a film produced in the United States that purportedly ridicules Islam’s Prophet Mohammed.
However, the wider issue of how the 2011 bombardment of Libya paved the way for gangs of militant Islamic extremists, once backed by NATO powers with heavy weapons, to fill the power vacuum left by Colonel Gaddafi, has been largely ignored.
Indeed, it’s a horrific irony that Hillary Clinton’s infamous gloating about Gaddafi’s execution - “We came, we saw, he died” - has now come full circle, with Stevens paying for such despicable arrogance with his life.
After NATO-backed insurgents with links to Al-Qaeda helped topple Colonel Gaddafi in Libya, they proudly flew the distinctive black Al-Qaeda flag over courthouses i...and other centers of power. That same flag flew over the Consulate today after the U.S. flag was torn down and burned.
In the aftermath of last year’s “no fly zone,” which turned into an incessant bombardment almost overnight, Libya, once one of the richest countries in Africa, is now run by brutal armed gangs who have rounded up black people in huge numbers, subjecting them to torture, incarceration in concentration camps and execution.
A February 2012 report by Amnesty International found that Libya’s militias are “largely out of control” and that “Thousands of detainees are being held in various prisons across the country” and are being “tortured to death.” The country’s NATO-installed rulers have proven themselves unwilling to prevent widespread abuse.
Libya’s oil resources have been carved up between NATO-aligned corporations while the country’s financial enslavement to global bankers is ensured with a fresh IMF loan and the end of their state-owned central banking system.
Despite the fact that Libya is in a state of hellish sectarian warfare and societal collapse, with armed thugs hostile to the west now in control of major power centers, the White House is intent on repeating the same disaster in Syria, funneling arms to rebels, the majority of whom aren’t even Syrian, who are being led by Al-Qaeda terrorists.
Indeed, some of the very same militants responsible for the Libya debacle were airlifted into Syria with the aid of NATO powers as part of the effort to topple Bashar Al-Assad.
The assault on Libya was carried out with absolutely zero constitutional authorization.
In June last year, President Obama arrogantly expressed his hostility to the rule of law when he dismissed the need to get congressional authorization to commit the United States to a military intervention in Libya, churlishly dismissing criticism and remarking, “I don’t even have to get to the Constitutional question.”
Obama tried to legitimize his failure to obtain Congressional approval for military involvement by sending a letter to Speaker of the House John Boehner in which he said the military assault was “authorized by the United Nations (U.N.) Security Council.”
Today’s attack on the U.S. Consulate serves as another reminder that the military-industrial complex’s new paradigm of “humanitarian intervention” – a scam they hope to repeat in Syria – has nothing to do with humanitarianism in that it only results in more bloodshed and more instability.
*********************
Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show and Infowars Nightly News.
NATIONAL SECURITY
U.S. Ambassador Killed in Libya
By Matt Vasilogambros
Updated: September 12, 2012 | 2:49 p.m.
September 12, 2012 | 6:54 a.m.
In this Monday, April 11, 2011 file photo, U.S. envoy Chris Stevens, center, accompanied by British envoy Christopher Prentice, left, speaks to Council member for Misrata Dr. Suleiman Fortia, right, at the Tibesty Hotel where an African Union delegation was meeting with opposition leaders in Benghazi, Libya.
U.S. ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens and three other embassy staff were killed in an attack in Benghazi on Wednesday, the White House confirmed on Wednesday.
President Obama strongly condemned the attacks, while also calling on embassies across the globe to increase security.
"Right now, the American people have the families of those we lost in our thoughts and prayers," Obama said. "They exemplified America's commitment to freedom, justice, and partnership with nations and people around the globe, and stand in stark contrast to those who callously took their lives."
(RELATED: Romney Campaign Denies Acting Rashly on Libyan Situation)
Later on Wednesday, Obama administration officials told the New York Times they believed the attack did not spontaneously spin out from protests, but had been planned ahead of time. Militants holding machine guns and rocket propelled grenades raided the embassy at night, as shown by a Reuters video, setting fire to the compound and eventually killing four personnel. Stevens died of suffocation, while the three other personnel were killed by gunshot wounds, CBS News reports.
Obama praised the work of Stevens, saying he was "a courageous and exemplary representative of the United States."
"Throughout the Libyan revolution, he selflessly served our country and the Libyan people at our mission in Benghazi," Obama said in a statement. "As Ambassador in Tripoli, he has supported Libya's transition to democracy. His legacy will endure wherever human beings reach for liberty and justice. I am profoundly grateful for his service to my administration, and deeply saddened by this loss."
At a press conference on Wednesday morning, Obama continued his praise: "It's especially tragic that Chris Stevens died in Benghazi because it is a city that he helped to save."
(RELATED: Obama Stays Above Political Fracas Over Libya Deaths)
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Stevens a dedicated member of the foreign service, saying he helped liberate an entire nation.
"Everywhere Chris and his team went in Libya, in a country scarred by war and tyranny, they were hailed as friends and partners," she said in delivered remarks. "And when the attack came yesterday, Libyans stood and fought to defend our post. Some were wounded. Libyans carried Chris's body to the hospital and they helped rescue and lead other Americans to safety."
Clinton confirmed that one of those killed was Sean Smith, a foreign service information management officer. Smith worked in the foreign service for 21 years. Clinton said he joined the State Department 10 years ago, and has served in Baghdad, Pretoria, Montreal, and most recently The Hague.
(RELATED: Anti-Islamic Filmmaker Stands By Video)
She said the State Department is waiting to release the names of the other two killed until their families are notified. She also further condemned the violence.
“Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior, along with the protest that took place at our Embassy in Cairo yesterday, as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet,” Clinton said in delivered remarks. “America's commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation. But let me be clear. There is no justification for this. None.”
The protests broke out due to outrage linked to an American video posted online that many Muslims have found offensive. The film’s almost 14-minute trailer, which is still on YouTube, shows people acting as violent Muslims, taking their aggression out on Christians and women. The actors, who are predominantly white, are covered in dark makeup and use thick accents. The film also depicts the prophet Mohammad, who is subject to several slurs.
Afghanistan banned YouTube on Wednesday, to prevent its citizens from watching the controversial film, Reuters reports. Soon after news of Ambassador Stevens' death broke, Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned the "inhuman and abusive act" of the filmmakers, which he said, "has caused enmity and confrontation between the religions and cultures of the world," according to the Wall Street Journal.
In his own statement, President Obama rejected the denigration of religious beliefs, but condemned the violent response.
"While the United States rejects efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others, we must all unequivocally oppose the kind of senseless violence that took the lives of these public servants," Obama said.
Clinton further rejected violence based on religious anger in her remarks: "Let me be clear, there is no no justification for this. None," she said. "Violence like this is no way to honor religion or faith."
Reactions from the U.S. embassy in Cairo and the Obama administration were criticized by Republican nominee Mitt Romney, saying, "An apology for America's values is never the right course." In his remarks to the press, Obama did not address these charges.
A Marine fast team of about 50 is being sent to Benghazi to provide further security for embassy officials, Fox News reported. Additionally, the U.S. is considering the use of intelligence-gathering, unmanned drones over Benghazi and other areas in Libya where Americans are stationed, CNN reports.
(PICTURES: U.S. Ambassadors Killed in Line of Duty)
FLASHBACK: Hillary Clinton boast on Gaddafi: 'We came, we saw, he d...
The assault on the American consulate in Libya consisted of two separate attacks that forced the Americans from the consulate and then besieged them in a second building in a gunbattle that lasted four and half hours, according to a detailed timeline from a senior administration official.
The bloody offensive by extremists killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. In addition, three more U.S. personnel were wounded.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the Libyan militants a "small and savage group," and she praised Stevens, who began working in Libya during the revolt against Moammar Gadhafi.
"He risked his life to stop a tyrant and gave his life trying to build a better Libya," she said.
The gunfire erupted around 10 p.m. Tuesday while 25-30 personnel were in the compound which consisted of several buildings and was guarded by a Libyan security force. Libyan Deputy Interior Minister of the Eastern Region Wanis al-Sharif told a news conference today that about 20 gun-wielding attackers fire automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades.
By 10:15 p.m., the attackers had stormed the grounds and begun firing on the main building. The U.S. official said that Stevens, 52; Sean Smith, a foreign service information management officer; and a regional security officer were in the main building, which by then had been set ablaze.
By 10:45 p.m., the trio had become separated by thick smoke as they tried to get out of the building. The regional security officer made it out of the building and U.S. security personnel tried to rescue Stevens and Smith. Smith, however, had died of smoke inhalation. His body was pulled from the building.
The searchers were unable to find Stevens before heavy gunfire forced them to retreat to a mission annex building, which was a distance away from the main building.
It took two attempts before American security officials were able to regain control of the consulate at 11:20 p.m., and they evacuated the staff from all of the buildings to the annex.
However, by midnight the U.S. official said today, a second assault began as the annex started taking fire. Libya's al-Sharif said today that a separate group was involved in that firefight. It lasted for more than two hours. Two more personnel were killed in that battle and two were wounded.
By 2:30 a.m., nearly five hours after the assault had begun, Libyan security forces helped to regain control of the site.
The State Department said that some time between 10:15 p.m. and 11:20 p.m., Stevens left the main building and went to the hospital. Clinton said he was taken there by Libyans.
Stevens was not seen by his colleagues until his body was brought later that evening to the Benghazi airport, where all U.S. personnel taken for a flight to Tripoli.
The U.S. official said that all U.S. staff had now been sent to Europe and the wounded are being treated in Germany.
The two other Americans also died during the incident but had not yet been publicly identified, officials said. U.S. officials are still making next of kin notifications.
RELATED: U.S. Presence in Libya: A Brief History
The attack on the consulate in Benghazi came shortly after protesters in Cairo, Egypt, scaled the walls of the U.S. embassy and tore down the American flag in an angry demonstration against a movie about the life of the Prophet Muhammad, depicting the founder of Islam as a fraud and a womanizer.
Egypt's embassy, along with embassies located in Armenia, Burundi, Kuwait, Sudan, Tunisia and Zambia all issued warnings on Wednesday advising Americans to be particularly vigilant.
Clinton suggested that the movie played a role in the Benghazi attack as well, saying they were "working to determine motivations," but added, "Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior, along with the protest that took place at our embassy in Cairo yesterday, as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet."
The secretary of state said she asked herself "how could this happen in a country we helped liberate and in a city we helped to save from destruction." But she added that the people who attacked the consulate were a "small and savage group."
President Obama said in a statement, "I strongly condemn the outrageous attack on our diplomatic facility in Benghazi, which took the lives of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens. Right now, the American people have the families of those we lost in our thoughts and prayers."
"I have directed my administration to provide all necessary resources to support the security of our personnel in Libya, and to increase security at our diplomatic posts around the globe," the president continued.
Speaking in the White House Rose Garden this morning, Obama said, "We will not waiver in our commitment to see that justice is done for this terrible act. And make no mistake, justice will be done."
Later today Obama issued a statement that as a mark of respect for the memory of Stevens, Smith and the American personnel killed in the attack, the flag of the United States shall be flown at half-staff until sunset on September 16.
Officials have confirmed that 50 marines in the Fleet Antiterrorism Security Team (FAST) are now headed to the embassy in Tripoli from the U.S. Naval Base in Rota, Spain.
A defense official says the bodies have been recovered, though there is still no word on when they might be transported out of the country. All other U.S. personnel at the consulate in Benghazi now have been taken out of the city.
U.S. embassies attacked in Yemen, Egypt after Libya envoy killed
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SANAA/CAIRO | Thu Sep 13, 2012 9:08am EDT
REuters) - Demonstrators attacked the U.S. embassies in Yemen and Egypt on Thursday in protest at a film they consider blasphemous to Islam and American warships headed to Libya after the death of the U.S. ambassador there in related violence earlier in the week.
Hundreds of Yemeni demonstrators broke through the main gate of the heavily fortified compound in eastern Sanaa, shouting "We sacrifice ourselves for you, Messenger of God". Earlier they smashed windows of security offices outside the embassy and burned cars.
"We can see a fire inside the compound and security forces are firing in the air. The demonstrators are fleeing and then charging back," one witness told Reuters. A security source said at least 15 people were wounded, some by bullets. An embassy spokesman said its personnel were reported to be safe.
In Egypt, protesters hurled stones at a police cordon around the U.S. embassy in central Cairo after climbing into the embassy and tearing down the American flag. The state news agency said 13 people were injured in violence which erupted on Wednesday night after protests on Tuesday.
Islamist gunmen staged a military-style assault on the U.S. consulate and a safe house refuge in Benghazi, eastern Libya on Tuesday. The U.S. ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans died in the assault, carried out with guns, mortars and grenades. Eight Libyans were injured.
U.S. President Barack Obama vowed to "bring to justice" those responsible and the U.S. military moved two navy destroyers towards the Libyan coast, in what a U.S. official said was a move to give the administration flexibility for any future action against Libyan targets.
Obama said security was being increased at U.S. diplomatic posts around the globe and on Thursday the U.S. consulate in Berlin was partially evacuated after an employee fell ill on opening a suspicious envelope.
About 1,000 Bangladeshi Islamists tried to march on the U.S. embassy in Dhaka after protests earlier in the week outside U.S. missions in Tunisia, Sudan and Morocco.
The U.S. military dispatched a Marine Corps anti-terrorist team to boost security in Libya, whose leader Muammar Gaddafi was ousted in a U.S.-backed uprising last year.
The attack, which U.S. officials said may have been planned in advance, came on the 11th anniversary of al Qaeda's attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001.
FILM
The attackers were part of a mob blaming America for a film they said insulted the Prophet Mohammad. Clips of the "Innocence of Muslims," had been circulating on the Internet for weeks before the protests erupted.
They show an amateurish production portraying the Prophet Mohammad as a womanizer, a homosexual and a child abuser. For many Muslims, any depiction of the Prophet is blasphemous and caricatures or other characterizations have in the past provoked protests all over the Muslim world.
An actress in the California production said the video as it appeared bore no resemblance to the original filming. She had not been aware it was about the Prophet Mohammad.
Among the assailants, Libyans identified units of a heavily armed local Islamist group, Ansar al-Sharia, which sympathizes with al Qaeda and derides Libya's U.S.-backed bid for democracy.
Former Libya militant commander Noman Benotman, now president of Britain's Quilliam think-tank, said Western officials were investigating a possible link with a paramilitary training camp about 100 miles south of the eastern Libyan town of Darnah.
U.S. officials said there were suggestions members of al Qaeda's north-Africa based affiliate may have been involved.
Yemen, a key U.S. ally, is home to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), viewed by Washington as the most dangerous branch of the militant network established by Osama bin Laden.
The attacks could alter U.S. attitudes towards the revolutions that toppled secularist authoritarian leaders in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia and brought Islamists to power.
The violence also could have an impact on the closely contested U.S. presidential race ahead of the November 6 election.
Republican Mitt Romney, Obama's challenger, criticized the president's response to the crisis. He said the timing of a statement from the U.S. embassy in Cairo denouncing "efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims" made Obama look weak as protesters were attacking U.S. missions.
Obama's campaign accused Romney of trying to score political points at a time of national tragedy.
The attack raised questions about the future U.S. diplomatic presence in Libya, relations between Washington and Tripoli, and the unstable security situation after Gaddafi's overthrow.
SAFE HOUSE
Stevens, a 52-year-old California-born diplomat who spent a career operating in perilous places, became the first American ambassador killed in an attack since Adolph Dubs, the U.S. envoy to Afghanistan, died in a 1979 kidnapping attempt.
A Libyan doctor pronounced him dead of smoke inhalation. U.S. information technology specialist Sean Smith and two other Americans who have not yet been identified also were killed when a squad of U.S. troops sent by helicopter from Tripoli to rescue the diplomats from the safe house came under mortar attack.
"It was supposed to be a secret place and we were surprised the armed groups knew about it," Captain Fathi al-Obeidi, commander of a Libyan special operations unit ordered to meet the Americans, said of the safe house.
Libyan leader Mohammed Magarief and Yemeni President Mansour Hadi both apologized to the United States over the attacks and Egypt's Islamist President Mohamed Mursi condemned them on television while also rejecting any "insult to the Prophet".
Many Muslim states focused their condemnation on the film and will be concerned about preventing a repeat of the fallout seen after publication in a Danish newspaper of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad. This touched off riots in the Middle East, Africa and Asia in 2006 in which at least 50 people died.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai called the making of the movie a "devilish act" but said he was certain those involved in its production were a very small minority.
The U.S. embassy in Kabul appealed to Afghan leaders for help in "maintaining calm" and Afghanistan ordered the YouTube site shut down so Afghans would not be able to see the film.
(Additional reporting by Samia Nakhoul in Beirut, Marie-Louise Gumuchian and Hadeel Al Shalchi in Tripoli, Sami Aboudi in Dubai, Raissa Kasolowsky in Abu Dhabi, Sarah N. Lynch, Arshad Mohammed, Andrew Quinn, Matt Spetalnick, Steve Holland and Mark Hosenball in Washington, William Maclean in London and Reuters reporters in Cairo and Benghazi; writing by Philippa Fletcher; editing by Ralph Boulton and Janet McBride)
The killings of the US ambassador to Libya and three of his staff were likely to have been the result of a serious and continuing security breach, The Independent can reveal.
American officials believe the attack was planned, but Chris Stevens had been back in the country only a short while and the details of his visit to Benghazi, where he and his staff died, were meant to be confidential.
The US administration is now facing a crisis in Libya. Sensitive documents have gone missing from the consulate in Benghazi and the supposedly secret location of the "safe house" in the city, where the staff had retreated, came under sustained mortar attack. Other such refuges across the country are no longer deemed "safe".
Some of the missing papers from the consulate are said to list names of Libyans who are working with Americans, putting them potentially at risk from extremist groups, while some of the other documents are said to relate to oil contracts.
According to senior diplomatic sources, the US State Department had credible information 48 hours before mobs charged the consulate in Benghazi, and the embassy in Cairo, that American missions may be targeted, but no warnings were given for diplomats to go on high alert and "lockdown", under which movement is severely restricted.
Mr Stevens had been on a visit to Germany, Austria and Sweden and had just returned to Libya when the Benghazi trip took place with the US embassy's security staff deciding that the trip could be undertaken safely.
Eight Americans, some from the military, were wounded in the attack which claimed the lives of Mr Stevens, Sean Smith, an information officer, and two US Marines. All staff from Benghazi have now been moved to the capital, Tripoli, and those whose work is deemed to be non-essential may be flown out of Libya.
In the meantime a Marine Corps FAST Anti-Terrorism Reaction Team has already arrived in the country from a base in Spain and other personnel are believed to be on the way. Additional units have been put on standby to move to other states where their presence may be needed in the outbreak of anti-American fury triggered by publicity about a film which demeaned the Prophet Mohamed.
A mob of several hundred stormed the US embassy in the Yemeni capital Sanaa yesterday. Other missions which have been put on special alert include almost all those in the Middle East, as well as in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Armenia, Burundi and Zambia.
Senior officials are increasingly convinced, however, that the ferocious nature of the Benghazi attack, in which rocket-propelled grenades were used, indicated it was not the result of spontaneous anger due to the video, called Innocence of Muslims. Patrick Kennedy, Under-Secretary at the State Department, said he was convinced the assault was planned due to its extensive nature and the proliferation of weapons.
There is growing belief that the attack was in revenge for the killing in a drone strike in Pakistan of Mohammed Hassan Qaed, an al-Qa'ida operative who was, as his nom-de-guerre Abu Yahya al-Libi suggests, from Libya, and timed for the anniversary of the 11 September attacks.
Senator Bill Nelson, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said: "I am asking my colleagues on the committee to immediately investigate what role al-Qa'ida or its affiliates may have played in the attack and to take appropriate action."
According to security sources the consulate had been given a "health check" in preparation for any violence connected to the 9/11 anniversary. In the event, the perimeter was breached within 15 minutes of an angry crowd starting to attack it at around 10pm on Tuesday night. There was, according to witnesses, little defence put up by the 30 or more local guards meant to protect the staff. Ali Fetori, a 59-year-old accountant who lives near by, said: "The security people just all ran away and the people in charge were the young men with guns and bombs."
Wissam Buhmeid, the commander of the Tripoli government-sanctioned Libya's Shield Brigade, effectively a police force for Benghazi, maintained that it was anger over the Mohamed video which made the guards abandon their post. "There were definitely people from the security forces who let the attack happen because they were themselves offended by the film; they would absolutely put their loyalty to the Prophet over the consulate. The deaths are all nothing compared to insulting the Prophet."
Mr Stevens, it is believed, was left in the building by the rest of the staff after they failed to find him in dense smoke caused by a blaze which had engulfed the building. He was discovered lying unconscious by local people and taken to a hospital, the Benghazi Medical Centre, where, according to a doctor, Ziad Abu Ziad, he died from smoke inhalation.
An eight-strong American rescue team was sent from Tripoli and taken by troops under Captain Fathi al- Obeidi, of the February 17 Brigade, to the secret safe house to extract around 40 US staff. The building then came under fire from heavy weapons. "I don't know how they found the place to carry out the attack. It was planned, the accuracy with which the mortars hit us was too good for any ordinary revolutionaries," said Captain Obeidi. "It began to rain down on us, about six mortars fell directly on the path to the villa."
Libyan reinforcements eventually arrived, and the attack ended. News had arrived of Mr Stevens, and his body was picked up from the hospital and taken back to Tripoli with the other dead and the survivors.
Mr Stevens' mother, Mary Commanday, spoke of her son yesterday. "He did love what he did, and he did a very good job with it. He could have done a lot of other things, but this was his passion. I have a hole in my heart," she said.
Global anger: The protests spread
Yemen
The furore across the Middle East over the controversial film about the Prophet Mohamed is now threatening to get out of control. In Sana'a, the Yemeni capital, yesterday around 5,000 demonstrators attacked the US embassy, leaving at least 15 people injured. Young protesters, shouted: "We sacrifice ourselves for you, Messenger of God," smashed windows of the security offices and burned at least five cars, witnesses said.
Egypt
Egypt's Islamist President Mohamed Morsi yesterday condemned the attack in Benghazi that killed the US ambassador. In a speech in Brussels, Mr Morsi said he had spoken to President Obama and condemned "in the clearest terms" the Tuesday attacks. Despite this, and possibly playing to a domestic audience, President Obama said yesterday that "I don't think we would consider them an ally, but we don't consider them an enemy".
Demonstrators in Cairo attacked the mission on Tuesday evening and protests have continued since.
Iraq
Militants said the anti-Islamic film "will put all the American interests Iraq in danger" and called on Muslims everywhere to "face our joint enemy", as protesters in Baghdad burned American flags yesterday. The warning from the Iranian-backed group Asaib Ahl al-Haq came as demonstrators demanded the closure of the US embassy in the capital.
Bangladesh
Islamists warned they may "besiege" the US embassy in Dhaka after security forces stopped around 1,000 protesters marching to the building. The Khelafat Andolon group called for bigger protests as demonstrators threw their fists in the air, burned the flag and chanted anti-US slogans.
Others
There was a Hamas-organised protest in Gaza City, and as many as 100 Arab Israelis took to the streets in Tel Aviv. In Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai postponed a trip to Norway, fearing violence. Officials in Pakistan said they "expected protests". Protesters in Tunis burnt US flags
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One is a piece of pop scholarship that attempted to offer a historical perspective on the early foundations of Islam. The other is a volatile hatchet job deliberately designed to insult and inflame opinion. But in the past 48 hours Channel 4's historical documentary Islam: The Untold Truth and the as-yet-untitled American-made history of Mohamed have combined to thrust Islam back on to the front pages with reports of protests and threats of violence.
The two films could hardly be more different. Tom Holland's documentary, first broadcast last month, took a revisionist approach towards the birth of Islam and questioned whether there was enough contemporaneous evidence for it to be possible to say for sure what exactly happened in Arabia during the eighth century.
The storm of criticism it provoked was largely academic, centring on allegations that Holland had presented a somewhat discredited school of thought as fact with few on-air caveats. But on Tuesday things appeared to turn nasty when Channel 4 said it had to cancel a private screening of the film after receiving "specific and credible" threats.
That evening, protests broke out in Egypt and Libya against a little-known, highly Islamophobic portrayal of the Prophet Mohamed that is believed to have been created by a US-based Israeli filmmaker. The film was released in July but only received attention in the Arab world when excerpts of it, complete with Arabic subtitles, began to surface last week. By the end of the evening, the US embassy in Cairo had been attacked while in Benghazi the American ambassador and three other staffers lay dead.
The more excitable commentators began comparing the reaction to the two films and raising the spectre of global protests created by the Danish cartoons or the death threats following Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses. But while the biography of Mohamed – a crude attack that portrays Islam's founder as a fraudulent child molester – clearly has the potential to wreak havoc, the reaction to Channel 4's documentary has been considerably more nuanced.
"It's not anger," says Mohammed Ansar, a Muslim commentator who has been a prominent online critic of Holland's documentary. "Anger is what we're seeing in the Middle East. What we've seen in the UK has been much more measured."
Inayat Bunglawala, chair of Muslims4UK, agrees. "I have no time for those who say Channel 4 shouldn't broadcast such a programme," he says. "Every broadcaster and historian has the right to examine the historical origins of any faith. But our objections were more about the quality of the documentary itself and the arguments Tom made."
The criticisms of Channel 4's documentary have considerable merit. Both Muslim and non-Muslim academics have poured scorn on some of the major conclusions that the 74-minute documentary tried to make – namely that there is not enough evidence to suggest that Mecca is the birthplace of Islam and that the early Arab invaders who conquered the Middle East following the death of Mohamed would not have described themselves as Muslims.
"Holland's work is based primarily on a lot of research that was published in the 1970s," Professor Hugh Kennedy, an expert on Middle Eastern history at the School of Oriental and African Studies, says. "It's interesting and challenging but in the end unconvincing."
More recent scholarship, he argues, has tended to vindicate the narrative laid down by Muslim tradition. "Just because you cannot definitely prove that something happened doesn't mean it didn't occur," he says. "At the same time the Anglo-Saxon invasions of Britain were taking place. We don't have a huge amount of contemporaneous evidence but no one doubts it happened."
For Dr Carool Kersten, an Arabist at Kings College London, the documentary was "an oversimplified hypothesis which of course touches raw nerves" because of the intense Islamophobia often suffered by Britain Muslims. "It is a complicated story, of course, and if you don't explain it well then you can expect accusations from within the Muslim community," he said.
But he added that Channel 4's decision to cancel the screening would only fuel tensions. "It's a pity they caved in and pulled the documentary due to scaremongering from a small group of idiots," he said. "This, in a way, tars the whole community with the same brush – it almost sanctions the 'see what they're like!' response."
Channel 4, however, has defended its decision to cancel the screening, which was meant for a small gathering of academics and journalists at its Westminster headquarters. A spokeswoman would not be drawn on the nature of the threat against them but she insisted it was credible enough to warrant their decision. "Cancelling the screening was certainly not something we wanted to do but it was a decision we had to make after taking security advice," she said.
Without further details of what kind of threat Channel 4 received it is difficult to know whether the broadcaster has caved in needlessly or is making a sensible decision given the circumstances. So far the documentary has seen none of the angry protests from more extremist factions that Britain experienced during the Danish cartoon scandal and recent Remembrance Sundays. But the memory of Rushdie's decades in hiding inevitably plays heavily on the minds of any commissioning editor, be they a broadcaster or a publisher. Even though The Satanic Verses is nearly 25-years old it still casts a shadow of Rushdie's life. Earlier this year he had to pull out of one of Asia's largest literary festivals in the Indian town of Jaipur when extremist groups threatened violence against the organisers.
Whatever its academic shortcomings, Channel 4's documentary has shone a spotlight on how sensitive the subject of Islam's early foundations can be. Given that Muslims believe that the Koran is the unchangeable word of God revealed directly to Mohamed, any academic study that casts aspersions on the facts laid out in the Muslim holy book will inevitably be controversial – and potentially blasphemous.
Fiyaz Mughal, who promotes inter-communal dialogue through his group Faith Matters, says this historical sensitivity has been exacerbated by the particularly acute stigmatisation Muslims have received over the last decade.
"You do often seem to get a backlash when Western academics approach this subject, because there is a lot of wariness within the Muslim community about how the information will be used," says Mughal, who recently set up a telephone hotline – based on a similar Jewish initiative that has been running for decades – encouraging Muslims to report incidents of Islamophobia. "They feel under a spotlight and they think why are you looking into us, what are you going to do with that information, will it be used in a negative manner?"
Tehmina Kazi, from British Muslims for Secular Democracy, is critical of Islam: The Untold Story but says many Muslim groups are too quick to move into an overtly hostile position whenever anything controversial airs about their faith.
"I remember a few years back there was a BBC documentary exposing some of the things that were happening inside madrassas (Islamic schools) and one group was putting out press releases calling on viewers to complain before it had even been broadcast," she says. "The default response was complain, complain, complain."
She believes Islamic faith groups need to get better at responding with reasoned debate – something she felt many have done successfully over the Channel 4 documentary. "Respond, don't react," she says. "It sounds simple but that is what we keep telling people and it's something Muslims organisations are not very good at. They'll often react to something, get angry or outraged. But what we need to be doing is to respond with reasoned, rational arguments."
Additional reporting by Hajar Wright
Unconfirmed Report: US Ambassador In Libya Sodomized Before He Was Killed
From Kerry Picket at Washington Times, via Riehl World News. I note this report is unconfirmed by AFP.
Keep in mind that the al-Queda linked rebels, supported by Obama, John McLame and Lindsey Grahamnesty (without the approval of Congress), apparently sodomized former dictator Muammar Ghaddafi before he was killed. One commentor at Dan Riehl’s blog notes that “Sexual humiliation of infidels is very important in Islam” and passed along this link: http://crombouke.blogspot.com/2010/02/sexual-jihad-demoralising-and...
But according to Obama and Hillary Rotten, the kind Libyans were trying to carry Ambassador Stevens to the hospital.
Yeah right!
http://maroonedinmarin.blogspot.fr/2012/09/unconfirmed-report-us-am...
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