September 8, 2022
The Libyan National Army (LNA) headed by Field Marshall Khalifa Haftar announced it has successfully completed an operation to kill or capture the jihadist mastermind of the mass beheading of 20 Egyptian Coptic Christian workers and one Ghanaian Christian whom the jihadists had kidnapped in the Libyan city of Sirte on February 15, 2015. After the beheadings, Al Qaqa’a Ben Omro pointed his bloody knife toward the sea and declared: “We will conquer Rome, by Allah’s permission.”
After the fall of Gaddafi in 2011, Libya was invaded by Jihadists and Muslim Brotherhood militias. The regular Libyan army was disbanded and the radicals took over. In September 2012, one of their attacks killed United States Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens and U.S. Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith as well as two CIA contractors trying to defend them in Benghazi.
Field Marshall Haftar’s Libyan National Army liberated Benghazi and all the areas east to the Egyptian border, pushing the jihadist forces west toward Tripoli.
In southern Libya, the mastermind of the mass beheading of the helpless Christian men, bearing the nom de guerre “al Mahdi Denqo,” was surrounded by an LNA counter-terrorism unit. He was ordered to surrender but resisted and was killed along with two more jihadist associates.
“This is a great day for Middle Eastern Christians and for Christians all over the world,” said AMCD co-chair, Tom Harb. “Christians are being persecuted and killed for their faith in numbers not seen since Roman times. At least in this instance, thanks to General Haftar and the LNA, there is a measure of justice, and the families may find some peace.”
“It also demonstrates why General Haftar deserves Western support,” added AMCD co-chair John Hajjar. “His goal is to protect minorities from the jihadists who would exterminate or drive them out of Libya. The justice of his cause is clear.”
The chairman of the committee on defense and security of the Libyan Parliament, MP Talal al Mahyub, praised the LNA operation and compared it to US forces eliminating the head of ISIS, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, a few years ago: “The Libyan Arab forces, led by Field Marshall Khalifa Hifter, are going after the terrorists across the Libyan territories to eliminate them. Our elected parliament appointed FM Hifter in 2014 to rid the country of the terror forces which have been attacking Libyans, Arabs, and Westerners on our soil. This operation is a just response to the massacre of our Egyptian innocent brothers who were working in Libya to feed their families and were targeted by these monsters. The LNA will continue to fight these radicals, and along with the counter-terrorism forces of the Arab Coalition and our friends in the US, Europe and the rest of the world, we will defeat this terror threat.”