Abdelhakim Belhaj

Abdelhakim Belhaj (or Belhadj; عبد الحكيم بلحاج, nom de guerre: Abu Abdallah Assadaq) (born 1 May 1966) is a Libyan politician and military leader.

He is the leader of the Islamist al-Watan Party and former head of the Tripoli Military Council.

He was the emir of the defunct Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, an anti-Gaddafi guerrilla group.

Born on 1 May 1966 in the Souq al Jum'aa area of Tripoli, Belhaj studied at Al Fateh University, where he earned a civil engineering degree.

During the years after his studying, he is said to have travelled extensively, spending time in Sudan, Turkey, Pakistan, Syria, as well as London and Denmark.

Wanting to rid Libya of Colonel Gaddafi, Belhaj joined other young Islamists who formed a group, but were chased from the country before they could achieve anything.

Leaving the country via Saudi Arabia he arrived in Afghanistan, in 1988, and became an Islamist fighter in the Soviet–Afghan War.

He then left Libya to study in Saudi Arabia and Sudan, and eventually moved to Qatar in the late 1990s.

In Qatar, Sallabi was welcomed by the Qatari ruling family as well as by the Muslim Brotherhood ideologue Yusuf al-Qaradawi.

In 1992, after the Mujahideen took Kabul, he travelled across the Middle East and Eastern Europe, before returning to Libya in 1992.

There he and others formed the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), which tried to overthrow Colonel Gaddafi from 1994 onwards.

Belhadj was known during this period as Abu Abdullah al-Sadiq, and was part of the LIFG that fought an insurgency campaign based from eastern Libya.

But after three unsuccessful assassination attempts on Gaddafi, the LIFG was crushed in 1998.

Some of the former guerrilla fighters joined the al-Qaeda ranks and contributed to the growth of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Several LIFG fighters also held prominent positions within al-Qaeda's leadership.

The relation between LIGF and al-Qaeda was officially confirmed in October 2001, when the UN Security Council designated the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group as a terrorist entity for its association with al-Qaeda, Bin Laden and the Taliban.

The UN Security Council specified that the LIFG relation with al-Qaeda was substantiated through the group's involvement in "the financing, planning, facilitating, preparing or perpetrating of acts or activities by, in conjunction with, under the name of, on behalf or in support of", "supplying, selling or transferring arms and related materiel to" or "otherwise supporting acts or activities of ... Al-Qaida ..., Usama bin Laden and the Taliban."

In 2002, after the September 11 attacks and Gaddafi's reconciliation with the West, an arrest warrant was issued for Belhadj by the Libyan authorities.

In it, it was alleged by the Gaddafi government that Belhadj had developed "close relationships" with al-Qaeda leaders, and specifically Taliban chief Mullah Omar.

Based in Jalalabad, he is alleged to have run and financed training camps for Arab mujahideen fighters.

After the United States entered Afghanistan under the command of the United Nations to confront the Taliban, the remaining members of the LIFG left the country, and roamed Europe and South East Asia.

Returned to Libya after the lifting of sanctions on the Libyan regime in 2003, Sallabi actively contributed to and eventually directed the de-radicalization program for former militant detainees.

Tracked by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), after a tip-off from the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) gained from London-based informants, Belhadj was arrested with his pregnant wife in 2004 at Kuala Lumpur International Airport, Malaysia.

Transferred on the same plane to Bangkok, he was then placed in the custody of the CIA, where he was retained at a secret prison at the airport.

Returned to Libya on the rendition aircraft N313P, he was held at the Abu Salim prison for seven years.

However, his wife Fatima was quickly released after receiving torture.

However, the remaining LIFG affiliates merged with al-Qaeda in 2007, as announced by Bin Laden's deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri and LIFG senior operative Abu Laith al-Liby in two video clips released by Al-Sahab, the media production house of al-Qaeda.

According to J. Millard Burr, Belhadj's release was part of a series of negotiations supported by the Qatari government, thanks to which over a hundred members of the Muslim Brotherhood and hundreds of members of the LIFG were freed by 2008.

According to J. Millard Burr, Belhadj's long-time associate Ali al-Sallabi played a major role in Qatar's involvement in securing the amnesty for those prisoners.

Ali al-Sallabi is a Libyan religious scholar and Islamist politician affiliated to the Muslim Brotherhood who was jailed for his supposed involvement in a plot to assassinate Muammar Gaddafi.

In March 2010 under a "de-radicalisation" drive championed by Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the Libyan authorities released him amongst 170 other Libyan Islamists.

In March 2011, Belhadj appeared in an unreleased Al Jazeera film, in which he praised the mediation of Saif al-Islam for his release.

In response, Gaddafi's son said that the men who had been freed "were no longer a danger to society."

In December 2011, Belhajd began legal proceedings against the British government over its role in his rendition to Libya.

Jack Straw denied any illegality in his actions as foreign secretary in the face of accusations that he had approved the British assistance in Belhadj's capture; In 2012, Tony Blair denied any memory of the incident.

In December 2013, a high court judge struck out Belhadj's case against the British government, on the grounds that if it were allowed to proceed it could potentially damage British national interests.

A report published on 13 October 2014 by the American Center for Democracy and authored by J. Millard Burr (co-author of the controversial 2006 book Alms for Jihad) posited that in 1996 Balhadj followed Bin Laden when al-Qaeda leader moved the centre of its operations from Afghanistan to Sudan.

At an Investigatory Powers Tribunal in January 2014, his lawyers said they had reason to suspect that GCHQ had been intercepting their phone calls with Libya-based Belhadj, and noted: "The right to confidential client-lawyer communication is a fundamental principle of justice."

This later turned out to be the case, and but one case of many.

As of June 2017, following the 2017 Qatar diplomatic crisis, Belhadj was placed on a terrorist watchlist on suspicion of terrorism and terrorist related activities with ties to Qatari support for such, by a number of nations, which include, Egypt, UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Libya's Tobruk government, as some supporting this claim.