US sends Marines to Libya after deadly attack

Glass, debris and over­turned fur­ni­ture are strewn inside a room in the gut­ted U.S. con­sulate in Beng­hazi, Libya, after an attack that killed four Amer­i­cans, includ­ing Ambas­sador Chris Stevens, Wednes­day. The Amer­i­can ambas­sador to Libya and three other Amer­i­cans were killed when a mob of pro­test­ers and gun­men over­whelmed the U.S. Con­sulate in Beng­hazi, set­ting fire to it in out­rage over a film that ridicules Islam’s Prophet Muham­mad. Ambas­sador Chris Stevens, 52, died as he and a group of embassy employ­ees went to the con­sulate to try to evac­u­ate staff as a crowd of hun­dreds attacked the con­sulate Tues­day evening, many of them fir­ing machine-guns and rocket-propelled grenades.(AP Photo/Ibrahim Alaguri)

MAGGIE MICHAEL, OSAMA ALFITORY

Asso­ci­ated Press

BENGHAZI, Libya — The U.S. dis­patched an elite group of Marines to Tripoli on Wednes­day after the mob attack that killed the U.S. ambas­sador and three other Amer­i­cans. Offi­cials were inves­ti­gat­ing whether the ram­page was a back­lash to an anti-Islamic video with ties to Cop­tic Chris­tians or a plot to coin­cide with the anniver­sary of the 9/11 ter­ror attacks.

Tuesday’s stun­ning attack on the Amer­i­can Con­sulate in Beng­hazi poses a daunt­ing task for U.S. and Libyan inves­ti­ga­tors: search­ing for the cul­prits in a city rife with heavy weapons, mul­ti­ple mili­tias, armed Islamist groups and lit­tle police control.

The one-story villa that serves as the con­sulate was a burned-out wreck after the crowd armed with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades ram­paged through it. Slo­gans of “God is great” and “Muham­mad is God’s Prophet” were scrawled across its scorched walls. Libyan civil­ians strolled freely in charred rooms with fur­ni­ture and papers strewn everywhere.

Pres­i­dent Barack Obama vowed in a Rose Gar­den address that the U.S. would “work with the Libyan gov­ern­ment to bring to jus­tice” those who killed Ambas­sador Chris Stevens, infor­ma­tion man­ager Sean Smith and two other Amer­i­cans who were not iden­ti­fied. Three other Amer­i­cans were wounded.

Stevens was the first U.S. ambas­sador killed in the line of duty in 30 years.

“We reject all efforts to den­i­grate the reli­gious beliefs of oth­ers, but there is absolutely no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for this type of sense­less vio­lence. None,” said Obama, who also ordered increased secu­rity at U.S. diplo­matic posts abroad.

Repub­li­can Mitt Rom­ney accused the Obama admin­is­tra­tion of show­ing weak­ness in the con­sulate killings, but the pres­i­dent retorted that his rival “seems to have a ten­dency to shoot first and aim later.” Some in the Repub­li­can Party called Romney’s remarks hasty.

The mob attack on Tues­day — the 11th anniver­sary of the Sept. 11, 2001, ter­ror­ist strike in the U.S. — was ini­tially pre­sumed to have been a spon­ta­neous act trig­gered by out­rage over a movie called “Inno­cence of Mus­lims” that mocked Islam’s Prophet Muham­mad that was pro­duced in the U.S. and excerpted on YouTube. The ama­teur­ish video also drew protests in Cairo, where angry ultra­con­ser­v­a­tives climbed the U.S. Embassy’s walls, tore down an Amer­i­can flag and replaced it with an Islamic banner.

But a U.S. coun­tert­er­ror­ism offi­cial said the Beng­hazi vio­lence was “too coor­di­nated or pro­fes­sional” to be spon­ta­neous. The offi­cial spoke on con­di­tion of anonymity because he was not autho­rized to dis­cuss the inci­dent publicly.

The FBI was send­ing evi­dence teams to Libya, a law enforce­ment offi­cial said.

Libya’s new lead­er­ship — scram­bling to pre­serve ties with Wash­ing­ton after U.S. help to over­throw for­mer dic­ta­tor Moam­mar Gad­hafi — vowed to find those behind the attack. Interim Pres­i­dent Mohammed el-Megarif apol­o­gized to the United States for what he called the “cow­ardly” assault, which also killed sev­eral Libyan secu­rity guards at the con­sulate in the east­ern city.

Par­lia­ment speaker Omar al-Houmidan sug­gested the attack might have been planned, say­ing the mob “may have had for­eign loy­al­ties” — an appar­ent ref­er­ence to inter­na­tional ter­ror­ists. “We are not sure. Every­thing is pos­si­ble,” he said.

A Libyan jihadist group, the Omar Abdel-Rahman Brigades, claimed respon­si­bil­ity for a bomb that went off out­side the Beng­hazi con­sulate in June, caus­ing no injuries. The group, which also car­ried out sev­eral attacks on the Inter­na­tional Red Cross in Libya, said at the time that the bomb was revenge for the killing of al-Qaida’s No. 2, Abu Yahya al-Libi, in a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan.

About 50 U.S. Marines were sent to Libya to guard U.S. diplo­matic facil­i­ties. The Marines are mem­bers of an elite group known as a Fleet Antiter­ror­ism Secu­rity Team, or FAST, whose role is to respond on short notice to ter­ror­ism threats and to rein­force secu­rity at embassies.

The Marines, sent from a base in Spain, were headed ini­tially to the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, not to Beng­hazi, accord­ing to U.S. offi­cials, who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymity because they were not autho­rized to talk to the press.

The con­sulate attack illus­trated the break­down in secu­rity in Libya, where the gov­ern­ment is still try­ing to estab­lish author­ity months after Gadhafi’s fall.

There also were indi­ca­tions that two dis­tinct attacks took place — one on the con­sulate, then a sec­ond hours later early Wednes­day on a nearby house to which the staff had been evacuated.

The crowd of sev­eral thou­sand that descended on the con­sulate was armed with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, said Wanis el-Sharef, the deputy inte­rior min­is­ter of Libya’s east­ern region.

A small con­tin­gent of Libyan secu­rity pro­tect­ing the facil­ity fired in the air, try­ing to intim­i­date the mob. But faced with supe­rior size and fire­power, the Libyan secu­rity with­drew, el-Sharef said. Gun­men stormed the build­ing, looted its con­tents and torched it, he said.

Details of how the Amer­i­cans were killed were still unclear.

Stevens, 52, and a con­sulate staffer who had stayed behind in the build­ing died in the ini­tial attack, el-Sharef said. The rest of the staff suc­cess­fully evac­u­ated to a nearby build­ing, prepar­ing to move to Beng­hazi Air­port after day­break to fly to the cap­i­tal of Tripoli, he said.

Hours after the storm­ing of the con­sulate, a sep­a­rate group of gun­men attacked the other build­ing, open­ing fire on the more than 30 Amer­i­cans and Libyans inside. Two more Amer­i­cans were killed, he said.

Dr. Ziad Abu Zeid, who treated Stevens, told The Asso­ci­ated Press that he died of asphyx­i­a­tion, appar­ently from smoke. In a sign of the chaos, Stevens was brought by Libyans to the Beng­hazi Med­ical Cen­ter with no other Amer­i­cans, and no one at the facil­ity knew who he was, Abu Zeid said.

He said he tried to revive Stevens for about 90 min­utes “with no suc­cess.” The ambas­sador was bleed­ing in his stom­ach because of the asphyx­i­a­tion but had no other injuries, the doc­tor said.

Widely regarded as one of the most effec­tive Amer­i­can envoys to the Arab world, Stevens bro­kered tribal dis­putes and con­ducted U.S. out­reach efforts in Jerusalem, Cairo, Dam­as­cus and Riyadh. As a ris­ing star in U.S. for­eign pol­icy, he retuned to Libya four months ago, deter­mined to see a democ­racy rise where Gadhafi’s dic­ta­tor­ship flour­ished for four decades.

Smith, 34, was an Air Force vet­eran who had worked as an infor­ma­tion man­age­ment offi­cer for 10 years in posts such as Brus­sels, Bagh­dad and Pre­to­ria. Smith was also well-known in the video game community.

The blood­shed stunned many Libyans, espe­cially since Stevens was a pop­u­lar envoy among dif­fer­ent fac­tions and politi­cians, includ­ing Islamists, and was seen as a sup­porter of their upris­ing against Gadhafi.

The leader of Ansar al-Shariah, an armed ultra­con­ser­v­a­tive Islamist group, denied any involve­ment in the attack.

“We never approve of killing civil­ians, espe­cially those who helped us,” Youssef Jihani said in a ref­er­ence to Stevens. “We are well-educated and religious.”

The vio­lence in Libya raised wor­ries that fur­ther protests could break out around the Mus­lim world, but the reac­tion was limited.

The movie, “Inno­cence of Mus­lims,” came to atten­tion in Egypt after its trailer was dubbed into Ara­bic and posted on YouTube. The video-sharing web­site blocked access to it Wednes­day. The trailer depicts Muham­mad as a fraud, a wom­an­izer and a mad­man in an overtly ridi­cul­ing way, show­ing him hav­ing sex and call­ing for massacres.

In Cairo, some 200 Islamists staged a sec­ond day of protest out­side the U.S. Embassy on Wednes­day, but there were no more attempts to scale the embassy walls. After night­fall, the group dwin­dled and some pro­test­ers scuf­fled with police, who fired tear gas and dis­persed them, emp­ty­ing the streets.

In a state­ment on his offi­cial Face­book page, Egypt’s Islamist pres­i­dent, Mohammed Morsi, con­demned the movie, say­ing the gov­ern­ment was respon­si­ble for pro­tect­ing diplo­matic mis­sions as well as the free­dom of speech and peace­ful protest.

But, he added, author­i­ties “will con­front with full deter­mi­na­tion any irre­spon­si­ble attempt to break the law.”

Romney’s crit­i­cism of Obama didn’t mesh com­pletely with events in Cairo.

A U.S. Embassy state­ment that Rom­ney referred to as akin to apol­ogy was issued by the Cairo embassy at mid­day on Tues­day at a time the staff was aware of still-peaceful demon­stra­tions nearby. It was four or five hours later when the mob breached the compound’s walls and tried to burn a U.S. flag, and later still when the Libya attack happened.

The embassy state­ment con­demned “the con­tin­u­ing efforts by mis­guided indi­vid­u­als to hurt the reli­gious feel­ings of Mus­lims — as we con­demn efforts to offend believ­ers of all reli­gions,” and noted that reli­gious free­dom is a cor­ner­stone of Amer­i­can democracy.

About 50 pro­test­ers burned Amer­i­can flags out­side the U.S. Embassy in Tunisia’s cap­i­tal Wednes­day but were kept away from the build­ing by rein­forced secu­rity. And in Gaza City, dozens of pro­test­ers car­ry­ing swords, axes and black flags chanted “Shame on every­one who insults the prophet.” The rally was orga­nized by sup­port­ers of a mil­i­tant group aligned with the rul­ing Hamas movement.

Afghanistan’s gov­ern­ment sought to avert any protests. Pres­i­dent Hamid Karzai con­demned the movie, and author­i­ties also tem­porar­ily shut down access to YouTube, said Aimal Mar­jan, gen­eral direc­tor of Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­ogy at the Min­istry of Communications.

The search for those behind “Inno­cence of Mus­lims” led to a Cal­i­for­nia Cop­tic Chris­t­ian con­victed of finan­cial crimes who acknowl­edged his role in man­ag­ing and pro­vid­ing logis­tics for the production.

A man iden­ti­fy­ing him­self as Sam Bacile told the AP on Tues­day that he wrote, pro­duced and directed the film.

Nakoula Bas­se­ley Nakoula, 55, told the AP in an inter­view out­side Los Ange­les that he was man­ager for the com­pany that pro­duced “Inno­cence of Muslims.”

Nakoula denied direct­ing the film and said he knew Bacile. But the cell­phone num­ber that the AP used Tues­day to reach the man who iden­ti­fied him­self as Bacile was traced to the same address near Los Ange­les where the AP found Nakoula. Fed­eral court papers said Nakoula’s aliases included Nicola Bacily, Erwin Salameh and others.

Nakoula told the AP that he was a Cop­tic Chris­t­ian and said the film’s direc­tor sup­ported the con­cerns of Chris­t­ian Copts about their treat­ment by Muslims.

Nakoula pleaded no con­test in 2010 to fed­eral bank fraud charges in Cal­i­for­nia and was ordered to pay more than $790,000 in resti­tu­tion. He was also sen­tenced to 21 months in fed­eral prison and ordered not to use com­put­ers or the Inter­net for five years with­out approval from his pro­ba­tion officer.

Nakoula denied pos­ing as Bacile. Dur­ing a con­ver­sa­tion out­side his home, he offered his driver’s license to show his iden­tity but kept his thumb over his mid­dle name, Bas­se­ley. Records checks by the AP sub­se­quently found the name “Bas­se­ley” and other con­nec­tions to the Bacile persona.

Bacile told the AP he was an Israeli-born, 56-year-old, Jew­ish writer and direc­tor. But a Chris­t­ian activist involved in the film project, Steve Klein, said Wednes­day that “Bacile” was a pseu­do­nym, that he was not Jew­ish or Israeli, and a group of Amer­i­cans of Mideast ori­gin col­lab­o­rated on the film. Offi­cials in Israel also said there was no record of Bacile as an Israeli citizen.

And even though Bacile told AP he was 56, he iden­ti­fied him­self on his YouTube pro­file as 74. Bacile also said he is a real estate devel­oper, but his name does not appear in searches of Cal­i­for­nia state licenses, includ­ing the Depart­ment of Real Estate.

Film indus­try groups and per­mit agen­cies said they had no records of “Inno­cence of Mus­lims.” A man who answered a phone listed for the Vine The­ater, a faded Hol­ly­wood movie house, con­firmed the movie had run for a least a day, and pos­si­bly longer, sev­eral months ago, arranged by a cus­tomer known as “Sam.”

Posted by AP News on Sep 12 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.