❓ WHAT HAPPENED: Robert Kenyon, running for Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party in a crucial parliamentary by-election (special election), previously attributed the Manchester Arena suicide bombing to the destabilization of Libya during Hillary Clinton’s time as U.S. Secretary of State in the 2010s. An official inquiry found that suicide bomber Salman Abedi, who murdered 22 people and injured over a thousand, including many children, was indeed radicalized in Libya. 📰 DETAIL: When Muammar Gaddafi was captured and killed by rebel fighters in October 2011, Hillary Clinton, then U.S. Secretary of State, celebrated on television, laughing, “We came, we saw, he died.” She had been the principal American architect of the intervention and pushed hard to be given the credit for it, as detailed in her own emails, released by the State Department in 2015. Clinton convinced a skeptical President Barack Obama to commit to military action, despite opposition from Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen, and CIA Director John Brennan. She also secured an Arab League resolution calling for a no-fly zone over Libya. However, Gaddafi’s ouster did not result in a transition to democracy. Libya devolved into a failed state, fractured into rival militia fiefdoms. ISIS established training camps in eastern Libya, and al-Qaeda-affiliated groups proliferated in Benghazi and Derna. The U.S. Ambassador was murdered in a militia attack in Benghazi in September 2012. By 2016, an estimated 2,000 ISIS fighters were operating on Libyan soil. It was into this landscape of collapsed authority, open borders, proliferating militias, and active terror training infrastructure that Ramadan Abedi, a Libyan extremist living in Britain as a refugee, returned with his sons, Salman and Hashem Abedi. 💬 KEY QUOTE: “With a smile and lipstick… [Clinton] created ISIS with her foreign policy… had she stayed out of Libya, the bombing wouldn’t have happened.” – Robert Kenyon 🎯 IMPACT: The Manchester Arena Inquiry found that Salman was involved with the February 17th Martyrs Brigade in Libya, and may have participated in raids against Gaddafi loyalists. Images recovered after the bombing showed Salman and Hashem Abedi in military uniform in Libya in 2011, and a hard drive found at the family home in Manchester confirmed it. Salman was opened as an MI5 subject of interest in March 2014 on his return to Britain, but had his case closed four months later as low risk, even as he was identified as being in contact with individuals linked to al-Qaeda and Libyan extremist networks. He returned to Britain for the last time in the days before his May 2017 attack after spending three weeks in Libya, with the Inquiry finding a “real possibility” that he had been carrying a component of his bomb when he landed, and that he had received recent “practical instruction” in assembling the device while in Libya. 👀 FLASHBACK: The Manchester Arena Inquiry concluded that the Abedi brothers were radicalized in Libya, with chairman Sir John Saunders writing, “I consider it is likely that Salman Abedi and Hashem Abedi were radicalised in Libya to a significant extent,” adding: “I also find that it is probable they obtained some form of training or assistance in how to build a bomb in Libya, as well as counter-surveillance training.” He also described how their father, Rashem, “exposed them to training with and combat alongside Islamist militias who fought in the Libyan civil war.” None of this would have been possible without Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy. |
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