Libyan Group Ansar Al-Sharia Put On Terror List In Turkey

The Turkish government has added the radical Libyan group Ansar al-Sharia to its list of terrorist organizations, in accordance with a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) decision from last week.

On Nov. 20, the UNSC announced that it had blacklisted Ansar al-Sharia for its ties to al-Qaeda and had instated an arms embargo, a global travel ban and had frozen the group's assets around the world at the request of the UK, France and the US. Ansar al-Sharia is accused of involvement in the attack on the US's diplomatic compound in Benghazi in September 2012, in which the US ambassador and three other Americans were killed.

The decision to classify Ansar al-Sharia as a terrorist organization was published in Turkey's Official Gazette on Wednesday.

The radical group had expressed its support for the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in October. US-led coalition forces are fighting to defeat ISIL, which has seized control of large areas of Syria and Iraq. According to the request sent to the UNSC, the Benghazi wing of Ansar al-Sharia has operated a number of terrorist training camps since 2012, mainly to help armed Islamist groups in Iraq, Syria and, to a lesser extent, in Mali.

Since the ousting of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, the country is struggling to maintain peace and control armed militias.

(Cihan/Today's Zaman)