By Libya Herald staff.
Benghazi, 23 January 2015:
The family of the commander of Ansar Al-Sharia in Benghazi, Mohamed Al-Zahawi, has confirmed that . . .[restrict]he is dead. He is said to have been buried in Misrata.
He was said to have been badly wounded during an airstrike in fighting near Benghazi’s Benina Airport in October, taken for treatment to Turkey, where he later died. However Ansar, which in Benghazi and Derna has been declared a terrorist organisation by the UN, the US as well as the Libyan government, decided for its own reasons to keep this secret, as did its allies and his family.
The death of the man who founded Ansar in Benghazi in April 2012 is not thought likely to impact on the present situation in the city where the organisation is now seen as largely vanquished.
The spokesman for Operation Dignity in the city, Mohamed Hejazi, confirmed that it received information that Zahawi was dead but would give no further details other than to describe him as a criminal and the head of groups that had destroyed Benghazi. “We don’t care about his death because he’s not important”, Hejazi said. [/restrict]
