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By Libya Herald staff.
Tripoli, 31 December 2013:
In a twist that throws further confusion on what really happened yesterday in Misrata, Ansar . . .[restrict]Al-Sharia in Tunisia has flatly denied that its leader, Saifallah Benhassine, also known as Abu Iyad, has been arrested.
The story began late yesterday morning with a report of Benhassine’s capture carried by Tunisia’s state news agency TAP, which quoted Tunisian security sources. Benhassine has been accused on complicity in the 2012 attack on the US embassy in Tunis as well as involvement in the smuggling of weapons from Libya into Tunisia.
The TAP report said that US special forces working with Libya units had detained the Ansar Al-Sharia leader along with a number of colleagues in Misrata. Initially, the US embassies in Tripoli and Tunis both declined to comment. However a later statement from the Defense Department in Washington flatly denied that there had been any US involvement in the Misrata operation. There was however no rebuttal of the fact that Benhassine had indeed been seized. [/restrict]
