Former minister: ISIS is still existed in Libya as terrorist cell

Former Libyan Interior Minister Fawzi Abdul Ali said that ISIS has ended in his country as an emirate, but still exists as cells.

Abdul Ali expressed concern that ISIS militants move from Iraq to Syria then Libya, especially lately. “These are real concerns,” Abdul Ali stressed.

Abdul Ali, from Misrata, was named minister of interior in the transitional Libyan government that was formed after ousting Muammar Gaddafi, and it was headed by Abdurrahim al-Keib. He now serves as the ambassador of his country to Bahrain.

ISIS militants

Regarding the ongoing anarchy since the death of the former regime leader in October 2011 until this day, Abdul Ali, who was a member of the Transitional Council and chairman of the Security Committee then the arming committee, said there were many reasons leading to it. One of these reasons is the deterioration of the official security and military institutions, their weakness, marginalization and rampant corruption during the ruling of the preceding regime, he explained.

Another reason for this security chaos is the political fragility at this stage, according to Abdul Ali. “Part of it is due to actions of political forces in Libya and the role of foreign interventions, all of what created this chaos that is now taking place.”

“There were obstacles that hindered the restoration of the work of police and internal security services with their full capacity after the fall of the former regime,” Abdul Ali said.

When asked about the reason why police and security forces have not yet fully recovered after six years, he said that there were many obstacles, which prevented the normal restoration of the work of the police and the security services at their full strength after the fall of the regime. The most important can be attributed to the fact that a strong movement belonging to the revolution did not want these bodies to function, merely because they belong to the former regime.

“This movement belongs basically to the so-called ‘political Islam’, topped by Muslim Brotherhood, Ansar al-Sharia, Libyan Fighting Group and others,” Abdul Ali explained.

He also pointed out that some parties, belonging to the former regime, also participated in obstructing the restoration of security “because they wanted to disrupt the formation of any state they cannot head. They wanted the February revolution to appear as a failed revolution that is not able to reconstruct the state, in addition to the failure to unite the army, which contributed to the inability to activate other security apparatuses.”

Abdul Ali was previously a member of the local council in Misrata, during the “February 17 Revolution”, and was also in charge of the security file in the city, which is currently one of the largest Libyan cities in terms of military apparatuses.