Abdelhakim Belhadj is Qatar’s man in Libya. Doha used him to merge extremist groups with revolutionaries in Libya in order to keep the civil war alive.

Belhadj was born in 1966 in Souq Al-Gomaa in Tripoli. In 1988, having graduated from the faculty of civil engineering, he left for Afghanistan to join the “Jihad against the Soviet Union” and stayed there for several years. He returned to Libya in 1994, after Kabul had fallen, to reorganize the ranks of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG). In 1995, when the LIFG training centers were hit, Belhadj returned to Afghanistan to be crowned as Emir of the Group.

But in 1996 he went back to Libya to fight against Qaddafi’s forces in Jebel Akhdar where 150 elements of his LIFG were killed, Belhadj fled to Sudan. In 2004, he was arrested by CIA operatives in Bangkok and delivered, through Britain, to Qaddafi who put him in solitary confinement for 7 years.  

However, Libyan Muslim Brother Ali Al-Salabi and Yusuf Al-Qaradawi came to the rescue. Both are friends of Qatar. They mediated between Qaddafi and LIFG and carried out what they called “thought reformation” sessions -which later proved useless- with imprisoned LIFG  elements. As a result, the Group dismantled itself and most of its members were released, including Belhadj.

During the Libyan war that followed the February 2011 revolution, Belhadj announced, through Al Jazeera, the “liberation of Tripoli” and appointed himself head of the Tripoli Military Council headquartered in Mitiga air base, which is not supervised by Libyan authorities.

Belhadj currently resides in Qatar where he commands the Qatari-trained Tripoli Brigade. And in addition to seizing $75 million from Gaddafi's money, he is also financed by Qatar. No wonder has established an airline company with a fleet of more than 70 planes, a T.V. channel, and a big political party, despite the fact that people hate him.

Belhadj is on the terror list issued by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, and UAE.