Rebel commander plays down Islamist past

The rebels' Tripoli military commander, a former leader of an Islamist militant group that sent fighters to Iraq and Afghanistan, insisted on Friday that the new Libya would shun extremism and would not become a breeding ground for terrorism.

The commander, Abdel Hakim Belhaj, said he was detained in 2004 in Malaysia and sent to a secret prison in Thailand where he claimed he was tortured by CIA agents. Then he was sent to Libya and jailed for seven years by Muammar Qadhafi's regime.

But Mr. Belhaj, 45, played down his Islamist past, seeking to allay concerns about his emergence as a prominent figure in the Western-backed Libyan opposition movement.

He said he had been blindfolded, hung from the wall and beaten on his back in Thailand but insisted he holds no grudges against the West because of the shared goal of ousting Mr. Qadhafi.

“Revenge doesn't motivate me personally,” he told The Associated Press in an interview at his headquarters at the sprawling military airport in central Tripoli.

Mr. Belhaj was a leader in the now dissolved Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which was deemed a terror group by the U.S. But he said he refused to join the al-Qaeda because he disagreed with its ideology of global jihad, or holy war, and wanted to focus on ridding Libya of Mr. Qadhafi.

He lauded the West for supporting the rebels, saying that “the U.N. Security Council and the whole world stood by us in the cause and have helped us to get rid of Qadhafi.”

Mr. Qadhafi, in courting the West in recent years, has insisted the al-Qaeda would gain influence in Libya unless he remained in power.

Mr. Belhaj dismissed those concerns. “We never have and never will support what they call terrorism,” he said. “Libya is a moderate Muslim country,” he said. “We call and hope for a civil country that is ruled by the law, which we were not allowed to enjoy under Qadhafi. The religious identity of the country will be left up to the people to choose.”