Hamas members operated in Libya in the service of Qatar, extending aid to Qatar-backed jihadi organizations there, such as Ansar Al-Shar’ia, which was responsible for the 2012 attack on the US embassy in Benghazi, in which the ambassador and three other US nationals were killed, and the Benghazi Revolutionaries Shura Council, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) in a report said.

In the report, MEMRI further said:

Libyan elements affiliated with Khalifa Haftar, head of the Libyan National Army (LNA), which is backed by the UAE and is fighting Islamist elements in eastern Libya, claim that the aim of the organizations backed by Qatar is to strengthen the Islamist rebels in Libya, increase the chaos there and help bring to power elements close to the Muslim Brotherhood, a movement which Qatar supports.

A Libyan court recently released four members of a Hamas cell who had been imprisoned for operating in the country with the help of Qatari and Turkish elements. The cell members were sentenced in 2019 to 18-22 years’ imprisonment for forming a clandestine foreign organization, possessing arms, jeopardizing Libya’s national security and smuggling weapons to Hamas in Gaza. After their release they were flown to Istanbul in a private plane, and from there reportedly to Qatar.

The Libyan elements close to Haftar claim that the cell, operating under the direction of Qatar, aided jihadi rebel organizations like Ansar Al-Shari’a and the Benghazi Revolutionaries Shura Council in their fight against Haftar’s forces, by training them in warfare methods, including in the manufacture of explosive devices. The sources stress that these are not the only Hamas members who have been arrested in Libya on terror charges. Thirteen other Palestinian Hamas operatives, one of them a woman, were also arrested for aiding Islamist groups fighting Haftar’s LNA. At a June 2017 press conference, LNA spokesperson Ahmad Al-Mismari said that Hamas’ military wing, the Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, “is involved in [the fighting] in Libya, under Qatar’s management and with Qatari funding”.

According to forces loyal to Khalifa Haftar, the head of the EAU-backed LNA, Qatar – which is one of the chief patrons of the Muslim........

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