A new video out of Libya shows a group of 21 detained Egyptian Coptic Christians being beheaded by the local ISIS faction, leading Egypt to announce a period of national mourning.
The 21 Christians were working in the Libyan coastal town of Sirte, and had been kidnapped in various actions by ISIS over the course of December and January.
Egyptian junta President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi vowed to take revenge for the killings at a time and in a method of his choosing, saying his government would take any necessary steps against ISIS.
The Egyptian junta has been backing Libyan General Khalifa Hifter in his attempts to take over the country, first in a coup against the parliament and then on behalf of the parliament that replaced them. Egypt has launched a handful of airstrikes in support of Hifter’s force, though they control very little of the nation.
The ISIS faction in Libya was originally an unaffiliated Islamist faction in the nation’s northeast. Since pledging allegiance to ISIS, the group has become much more powerful and influential, and has carried out operations in several cities across Libya.
Is it just me? Did you see the picture of these 21 guys in orange jump suits lined up? Did you see the look in their face? They look waaaaaayyyy tooooo calm and cooperative for a bunch of guys who know they are about to get their heads chopped off??? Do you see them fighting back? Struggling? Crying?? Pleading???
Didn't think so! Sorry but all these videos have that staged phony propaganda feel to them. Does not pass the smell test.
Some were actually smiling.And the ones leading them look as if they are giants .I doubt that they are many tall Libyans as those.
I am sorry all these videos stink to high heaven. The Foley vid, the first beheading, he proceeds to give a speech right after his executioner gives his speech explaining why we is about to cut Foley's head off, then Foley gives his speech.
Sorry, that does not have the ring of truth to it.
To this day the Egyptian government has not come up with the names of those it claimed were kidnapped and murdered.Why would these people choose to go to a country that is in chaos and full of problems?There wee reports of kidnapping in December and January of Egyptians that later turned out to be false.Th photos of the murderers show some of them wearing very expensive watches in their left wrist where ISIS rules forbid the wearing of gold watches in left wrist?in another,holding the knife by the left hand.
There are not many Libyans that tall.It is very high production .
Yet another made up video by a fake group pretending to be some mysterious ISIS faction in an area where ISIS have no presence at all and showing social network pages run by individual connected to Hafter.??"However, with many armed groups operating in Libya, it is not clear how much power IS actually wields."
Sisi has long been looking for and manufacturing pretexts to divert the attention of the Egyptian away from his complete failure to fix any of Egypt festering problems.The Egyptian security apparatus and intelligence service has been long known to have carried attacks against Coptic Churches and killing many people and with compliant media accused other groups of the crimes that they themselves committed.This is nothing but another false flag operation to give Sisi the thing that he has been looking for to send Egyptian army to invade Libya since Hafter has not been able to accomplish any of the tasks that he was supposed to do.France has a hand of this too and so is the United Arab Emirates.They all covet Libyan resources,and if they have to create bogus terrorist organizations that they pretend to be fighting in public but control and direct in secret.It is oil and all what bgoes with that they are after ,not terrorists.
"… looking for and manufacturing pretexts to divert the attention of the Egyptian away from his complete failure to fix any of Egypt festering problems."
Kind of like what the US President and the US Congress do…"oh, Oh…we have another "national security threat/crisis scare" (you are scared, aren't you?) so lets spend more on the military and militarized police!! Sorry, we'll have to cut more social services so we can fund the expanding military war machine and the war machine companies who sacrifice sooo much to take soooo much of the taxpayers dollars."
The murder and displacement of Middle East Christians by fanatics and those who would encourage this sort of religious cleansing has been going on since the Iraq invasion. Did these things happen when the evil secular dictators were in power too? If it did, I never heard of it.
"Egyptian junta President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi vowed to take revenge for the killings "
This from the same Dictator who killed over one thousand Egyptians protesters in about an hour time??
It could be very well possible that his agents and Hafter operatives were behind this killing to give him reasons to send his forces to Libya in order to rescue Hafter from defeat .War would hide failure at home.
The above commenters seem convinced that this mass beheading is another false flag event. I have no idea, so will not voice an opinion. But I would say that not everything is a false flag. At least some of ISIL's atrocities must be real.
But my first thoughts on this article turned to Hillary Clinton. Wasn't she the chief Washington architect of the illegal Libyan mass bombing? If Qadhafi, who ran a secular government, had been left alone, perhaps atrocities such as this would not be happening in Libya. The hysterical lie that Qadhafi was about to level Benghazi and kill tens of thousands can be placed at Hillary's feet, along with her other two RTP harpies (Rice and Powers). Obama must have been afraid to take these three on.
Obama is afraid to take on McCain, what's his name from South Carolina, Cruz, et.al. How is he going to develop enough courage to take on his "harem"?
But I would say that not everything is a false flag.
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I would have it agree I suppose, but the flip side to that argument is not every incident reported is NOT a false flag. We know that there is a long long long history of false flag events from Gladio to Northwoods (proposed) to 9/11 to the anthrax attacks etc etc etc. …..oh I forgot the gulf of Tonkin.
It seems that the media got hold of this news very ,very quickly unlike the killing of the three Muslims in Chapel Hill ,North Carolina which it took most news media about 12hours to report on it?
Well, let's see:
The Copts were abducted in December and January. The "execution video" was released at some point, and once the video was released the media attention began.
The killings in North Carolina, on the other hand, were fairly pedestrian by US standards. An argument over a parking space and someone pulls a gun. It took a few hours for word to get out that the victims were Muslims, at which point the case took on a national interest aspect. But the US media still seems to have been quicker on it than it was on the abduction and murder of 20 Egyptian Copts.
I doubt very much that the argument over parking space is the motive of the killings There was no news coverage of the killings that happened Tuesday around 5PM until much later next day.
[moderator’s note: Multi-page paste of material by other authors and from other sites elided; “comments” on Antiwar.com are for commenting, not for flooding with entire articles from other venues – TLK]
And it's quite possible you're right that the argument over the parking space wasn't the motive.
But from the point of view of national media, since that's what it APPEARED to be about, it was natural that it wouldn't get national coverage until such time as they noticed that it might be about something else.
Three people getting gunned down over a stupid argument just isn't that unusual in the US. You seem to be intent on shoehorning some kind of sinister media motive into the subject. You've got it exactly backward. If the national media had noticed the victims were Muslims earlier, it's all they would have talked about for the rest of the day, because they love a sensational angle.
Are you saying that the media so quickly mention the religion or ethnicity of ,when the attacker or attackers happen to be Muslim or Muslims could not find so quickly ,in this case, that they were Muslims when it was all over the social media such as Twitter.It took the media about 12-15 hours even to report the incident. I did not get backward.
They cover much smaller story quicker than this.
To moderator :
Maybe some people need to see other point views that are not available or included or your website because it seems to me that ,when it comes to issue of Libya in particular,and the issue relating to so extremism in Muslim world ,you rely heavily on the same sources that you often criticize their coverages of the Ukraine issue for example.There were many such news that was reported about kidnapping and killings in Libya that later proved to be false and was just used to advance certain people or groups agenda.As n example is the often repeated phrase " the internationally recognized government or Parliament while never bothering to mention that these two entities were found to be invalid by verdict of the Libyan supreme court which the so called international community insists on totally ignoring and not respecting while giving support to entities that have very little support in country itself.
The media devote so much coverage to crimes attributed to some mysterious group that claim to be ISIS ,and neglecting the much bigger destruction and deaths that Hafter inflicted on the whole country.I am not well versed in English some time s to convey what I need to say and use other sources that covey my thoughts more eloquently than I could.
Any way thanks.
"Maybe some people need to see other point views"
Maybe they do. And if they do, and if they want to, they have web browsers and know how to type www dot google dot com into those web browsers.
To repeat, and it is not negotiable: Comments at Antiwar.com are for your comments, not for pasting entire long articles from other sites into. You don't have to like it. That's how it is whether you like it or not.
It seems to me that you are defending the way the media ,main stream media or the big corporate media, covers different events which I strongly find troubling and very biased.Many others have pointed to the slow response that American big media outlets in regard to the shooting in Chapel Hill,not just me. And that some who irritated you because you do not agree with it. I was not defending any one or anything nor supporting what happened in any shape or form which seems you think to be the case here.I was simply trying to make a point that somehow compelled you to respond to respond in sarcastic way to. The video was released yesterday and immediately picked up by the media outlets ,not 12-15 hours after as in the case of North Carolina shooting.And that is my point that you insist on dismissing and belittling.You can refuse to post whatever you want that does not suit you.And it is not about whether I like or not, because you control what you get from us lowly creatures ,you can choose to post what we send you or not.I did not realize that you were the gate master and keeper not just commentator like the rest of people .Chill out man!No need for the scolding and sarcasm.
"It seems to me that you are defending the way the media ,main stream media or the big corporate media, covers different events which I strongly find troubling and very biased"
No, I'm not "defending" it. I'm "explaining" it.
Shootings are common in the US. They don't get nationwide news coverage unless there's something unusual about them. There was something unusual about this one — the victims were Muslims — but it didn't occur at a mosque or at a religious or political event, so it probably took some time for the national media to notice that.
The killings in Libya, on the other hand, were brought straight to the national media as world news.
So I don't think your contention supports the conclusion that there was some kind of reluctance to cover the Chapel Hill killings. But that's just my opinion.
As far as my ability to "refuse to post," that's not how it works. I don't get to stop posts because I don't agree with them. I get to stop posts that meet certain criteria. Yours, for the most part, do not meet those criteria.
But the ones of yours that DO meet those criteria are the ones that have little or no content from you and lots of pasted in, quite possibly copyrighted, content from other sites. It's not that I object to the content or the opinions in the content. It's that if I know, or if I reasonably should know, or if someone points out, that the content is plagiarized and do nothing about it, I'm leaving Antiwar.com vulnerable to copyright claims and even litigation. And I'm not going to do that.
Three Muslim-Americans were murdered at an apartment complex near the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill on 10 February 2015, in what appears to be an anti-Muslim terrorist attack. All three were shot in the head. Hours after the attack (which occurred at 5pm EST), there was very little media coverage, and no national coverage by any major news outlets. It ultimately took ((15-17 hours)) for leading news outlets to publish stories about the shooting. http://bennorton.com/3-muslim-americans-killed-in…
Why would Hafter airplanes attack the forces that were sent by Tripoli based government after those who committed many of the killings in Sirte?Why would the killings happen in area not under Hafter control?Most these killings were directed at forces associated with Tripoli based government?
There was news of Egyptian being kidnapped in Sirte and some one claimed in similar video that the same group was behind the kidnapping ,but turned out that was all false which got no much coverage.
Where is Sirte on the map?
It in north west not north east of Libya.
http://stopwar.org.uk/images/news2015/islamophobi…
Sisi attacks residential areas as he does in Sinai using the big scam of fighting terrorists. https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=826635104074…
"Egyptian journalist Amr Adeeb accused the Muslim Brotherhood of beheading 21 Copts in Libya. He also exonerated the Islamic State (ISIS) from the crime, which ISIS took responsibility for in a video broadcasted on the internet yesterday night.
In his programme, AlQahera AlYoum, Adeeb said that the executioner wore his watch on his left hand, but Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi ordered that watches be worn on the right hand. "If he [Al-Baghdadi] said it must be worn on the right hand, that means it must be worn on the right, even if their hand is cut off."…
…While Adeeb accused the Muslim Brotherhood of being behind the executions, his colleague, Khaled Abu Bakr, who sat beside him said: "These are not just groups, these are states, extremely organised states with lots of money and information from intelligence services. They are being armed with the knowledge of states."?? https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/africa/170…
Two Libyan security officials told AP that civilians, including three children and two women, were killed in the strikes. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/16/egyp…
Sisi would do everything to drag other countries to advance his agenda in Libya.Fighting terrorism is a big scam.Most these states that claim to fight terrorists for murdering people have murdered a lot more people than the terrorists did.And each war is used to fix the mess that resulted from the previous war.
Sisi and many of his official shave said on many occasions that eastern Libya is and should be part of Egypt.It is not about terrorism at all.