Reply #10: A familiar face emerges to lead Libya's new army [View All]

[pinboy3niner]

By DAVID ENDERS
McClatchy Newspapers


ZAWIYAH, Libya -- Former Libyan military officers packed an auditorium here on Wednesday to listen to the man who has been appointed to lead the country's army as the movement that deposed Moammar Gadhafi tries to consolidate its control.

But leading the discussion wasn't the man most Western news reporters have focused on in recent weeks, Hakim Belhaj, the leader of rebel forces in Tripoli and a former member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, who was imprisoned by Gadhafi after the CIA captured him in Southeast Asia in 2004.

Instead, the man who spoke to the eager former officers was Gen. Khalifa Hifter, who defected from Gadhafi's army in 1987 and moved to the United States, where he lived in the Washington suburbs for decades before returning to Libya earlier this year.

Officers crowded into the auditorium to hear Hifter's presentation, many sitting in the aisles or standing wherever space was available. One of the officers, annoyed by a speaker who preceded Hifter, encouraged the speaker to hurry up.

"We came to hear Gen. Hifter!" the man shouted, to loud applause.

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http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/09/14/2407400/a-familiar-face-emerges-to-lead.html