By Ajnadin Mustafa.
Tripoli, 20 October 2014:
Libya Dawn has accused Saudi Arabia of supporting terrorism within Libya’s borders and has claimed that . . .[restrict]it was behind Saturday’s attack on Tripoli’s Ottoman-era mosque in Shara Mizran.
The claim follows reports that the mosque, along with others recently targeted in Tripoli, had been attacked by Salafists connected to extremist elements within Libya Dawn.
A statement from Libya Dawn’s media office, however, has strongly condemned the attacks claiming that they were carried out by paid agents of the Saudi government. Saudi intelligence was hostile to the 17 February Revolution, it said, because it feared a similar uprising within its borders.
The aim of those behind the attacks, Libya dawn claimed, was not the desecration of a Sufist mosques, as it was made to look, but to convince the outside world that Tripoli under Libya Dawn was insecure and under the control of extremists.
The statement called on the Libyan Ministry of Awqaf, the Dar Al-Ifta and civil society organisations to recognise clearly the political agenda behind the attacks and condemn them. They have already been condemned by UNESCO, Omar Al-Hassi’s interior ministry and the Council of Ulema.
It is not thought the claims about Saudi Arabia, reminiscent of the propaganda of the Qaddafi regime, will be widely believed.
Salafists are certainly strongly opposed to Sufist traditions in Tripoli and Saudi Arabia is the heartland of Salafism. But there are Salafists on both sides of the current political divide in Libya. Some support the HoR and are opposed to militancy (and a few among them have been murdered by militants in Benghazi, Derna and elsewhere as a result). Others, such as the Grand Mufti, support Libya Dawn. [/restrict]
