Deadly embassy attacks were days in the making

by Sara Lynch and Oren Dorell, USA TODAY, Detroit Free Press, September 12, 2012

CAIRO — Days of planning and online promotion by hard-line Islamist leaders helped whip up the mobs that stormed the U.S. Embassy in Egypt and launched a deadly attack on the U.S. Embassy in Libya that killed an ambassador and three others.

As the U.S. tightened security worldwide at embassies and Libya’s president apologized for the attack, details emerged of how the violence began, according to experts who monitor Egyptian media.

Christopher Stevens, 52, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, was killed, along with three other Americans, on Tuesday night when a mob of protesters and gunmen stormed the embassy in the eastern city of Benghazi.

In response, the Obama administration sent an anti-terrorism detail of Marines to reinforce security at U.S. diplomatic facilities, and the Pentagon said two warships were moving toward the Libyan coast.

The killings in Libya followed demonstrations in front of Cairo’s U.S. Embassy, where protesters tore down the U.S. flag and scaled the embassy’s wall.

The protest was planned by Salafists well before news circulated of an objectionable video ridiculing Islam’s prophet, Mohammed, said Eric Trager, an expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

The protest outside the U.S. Embassy in Cairo was announced Aug. 30 by Jamaa Islamiya, a State Department-designated terrorist group, to protest the ongoing imprisonment of its spiritual leader, Sheikh Omar abdel Rahman. He is serving a life sentence in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

When the video started circulating, Nader Bakkar, the spokesman for the Egyptian Salafist Noor party, which holds about 25% of the seats in parliament, called on people to go to the embassy. He also called on non-Islamist soccer hooligans, known as Ultras, to join the protest.

On Monday, the brother of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri, Mohamed al Zawahiri, tweeted that people should go to the embassy and “defend the prophet,” Trager said.

Zawahiri justified al-Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks in an interview with Al Jazeera last month.

“If America attacks the Arab peoples and their regimes do not defend them, somebody who does defend the Arab and Muslim peoples should not be considered a criminal,” Zawahiri told the television network, according to a translation by MEMRI. “We have done nothing wrong.”

A U.S. official, speaking to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the situation publicly, said the Obama administration is investigating whether the assault on the U.S. consulate in Libya was planned to mark the anniversary of 9/11.

The State Department identified one of the other Americans as Sean Smith, a foreign service information management officer. The identities of the others were being withheld pending notification of next of kin.

A senior administrations official — who briefed reporters on the details but requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly — describe the assault as an intense hours-long firefight between heavily armed gunmen and U.S. and Libyan security personnel attempting to defend the diplomatic mission.

This is the official’s story:

Stevens was on a routine visit to the consulate in Benghazi when the compound came under fire from unidentified gunmen. In 15 minutes the gunmen gained access to the compound.

Stevens was in the building with Smith. About 45 minutes into the battle U.S. security personnel assigned to a nearby security annex attempted unsuccessfully to fight their way into the building but were driven off. More than 30 minutes later U.S. and Libyan security personnel tried again and were able to get into the main building. They rescued the remaining staff and hustled them to the nearby annex.

Soon after, the annex came under fire in a battle that lasted two hours. After the fighting died down, Stevens was brought to a Benghazi hospital. His body was later turned over to the Americans at Benghazi airport.

The Muslim Brotherhood on Wednesday condemned the violence.

“Just because you are against something doesn’t mean you have to kill,” she said. “I think it’s really a disaster.”

The Muslim Brotherhood’s political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), condemned the film in a statement Tuesday.

“The party considers the film a racist crime and a failed attempt to provoke sectarian strife between the two elements of the nation: Muslims and Christians,” a statement said on the FJP’s English-language website. “Moreover, the FJP considers this movie totally unacceptable, from the moral and religious perspectives, and finds that it excessively goes far beyond all reasonable boundaries of the freedoms of opinion and expression.”

President Obama on Wednesday condemned the attack and ordered stepped-up security at diplomatic installations around the world.

“There is absolutely no justification for this type of senseless violence. None,” the president said.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said, “This was an attack by a small and savage group, not the government” or the people of Libya. She said it should “shock the conscience of people of all faiths around the world.”

“Violence like this is no way to honor religions or faith, and as long as there are those who will take innocent lives in the name of God, the world will never know true and everlasting peace,” she said.

Clinton said that Americans and Libyan security personnel fought alongside each other in an effort to defend the compound. She said Libyans brought Stevens’ body to the hospital.

Clinton earlier called on Libyan President Mohammed el-Megarif to coordinate additional support to protect Americans in Libya.

El-Megarif described the attack as “cowardly” and offered his condolences on the death of Stevens and the three other Americans. Speaking to reporters, he vowed to bring the culprits to justice and maintain his country’s close relations with the United States. He said the three Americans were security guards. “We extend our apology to America, the American people and the whole world,” el-Megarif said.

Stevens was killed when he and a group of embassy employees went to the consulate to try and evacuate staff as the building came under attack by a mob with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.

By the end of the assault, much of the building was burned out and trashed. On Wednesday, Libyans wandered freely around the burned-out building, taking photos of rooms where furniture was covered in soot and overturned. Walls were scrawled with graffiti.

Ziad Abu Zeid, the Libyan doctor who treated Stevens, said he had “severe asphyxia,” apparently from smoke inhalation, causing stomach bleeding, but had no other injuries. Stevens was practically dead when he arrived before 1 a.m. Wednesday, and “we tried to revive him for an hour and a half, but with no success,” Abu Zeid said.

Stevens was a career diplomat who spoke Arabic and French and had already served two tours in Libya, including running the office in Benghazi during the revolt against Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. He was confirmed as ambassador to Libya by the Senate this year.

His State Department biography, posted on the website of the U.S. Embassy to Libya, says he “considers himself fortunate to participate in this incredible period of change and hope for Libya.”

Clinton said Stevens had a “passion for service, for diplomacy and for the Libyan people.”

He “risked his own life to lend the Libyan people a helping hand to build the foundation for a new, free nation. He spent every day since helping to finish the work that he started,” she said.

Sam Bacile, a 56-year-old California real estate developer who identifies himself as an Israeli Jew and who said he produced, directed and wrote the two-hour film, Innocence of Muslims, said he had not anticipated such a furious reaction.

Video excerpts posted on YouTube depict the Prophet Muhammad as a fraud, a womanizer and a madman in an overtly ridiculing way, showing him having sex and calling for massacres.

Speaking by phone from an undisclosed location, Bacile, who went into hiding Tuesday, remained defiant, saying Islam is a cancer and that he intended his film to be a provocative political statement condemning the religion.

“Islam is a cancer, period,” he repeatedly said.

Florida pastor Terry Jones, the Gainesville-area pastor known for his virulent opposition to Islam, issued a statement on his website defending the film.

“The film is not intended to insult the Muslim community, but it is intended to reveal truths about Muhammad that are possibly not widely known,” Jones said in statement.

Wednesday morning the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen Martin E. Dempsey, called Jones.

“In the brief call, Gen. Dempsey expressed his concerns over the nature of the film, the tensions it will inflame and the violence it will cause,” said Marine Col. Dave Lapan, a spokesman for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “He asked Mr Jones to consider withdrawing his support for the film.”

Some Muslims believe that any depiction of the prophet Mohammed, positive or negative, is not allowed.

“Depicting the prophet Mohammed isn’t forbidden but it is discouraged because deifying a human being can distract the faithful from worshiping god,” said M. Zuhdi Jasser, a devout Muslim and author of the book A Battle for the Soul of Islam: An American Muslim Patriot’s Fight to Save His Faith.

Those who believe that you can commit violence against those who depict the prophet are considered radical groups, Jasser said. He said that the attacks in Libya are “nothing short of pure evil and in no way representative of the teachings and practices of the faith of Islam.”

“These crowds are using the movie as an excuse to wreak violence on Americans in Libya and Egypt,” Jasser said. “To most Muslims, these excuses for violence that ultimately, even if they are offending or violating a tradition of the prophet, in no way justify any of these types of activities.”

The Muslim Brotherhood burgeoned in popularity and presence after Mubarak was ousted in February 2011 and Morsi formerly headed its political party.

“Some people in the Middle East don’t understand the relationship between government and media and think the (U.S.) government controls the media like they do here,” said Said Sadek, political sociologist and affiliate professor at the American University in Cairo. “They are putting the blame on the U.S. government, which has nothing to do with it.”

Anti-American sentiments are so deep in much of the Arab world that the film that angered Egyptian and Libyan protesters should be seen “not as a cause of the protests, but a pretext,” said Shadi Hamid, director of research for the Brookings Doha Center.

In Egypt, especially, the U.S. government is seen as slow to support the uprising that felled Mubarak in February 2011, and supportive of a military-led transition, Hamid says. Egyptians know that U.S. administrations supported Egyptian dictators since the late 1970s, and supported other Arab ruling families and Israel for many decades more, he says.

Anti-American sentiments are less strong in Libya, where the U.S. helped oust Gadhafi, but unlike in Egypt, the Salafis in Libya are armed, which contributed to the level of violence, Hamid said.

Arab Muslims also “are not comfortable with the idea that freedom of speech can be used to attack religion,” he said.

Although Arab liberals rarely feel the need to join the outcry, ultra-conservative Salafists view themselves as defenders of the faith and use religion to mobilize grass-roots support, Hamid said.

“Rather than rally around the flag they rally around religion, and it works,” he said.

Dorell reported from McLean, Va. Contributing: Carolyn Pesce in McLean, Va.; the Associated Press