CAIRO — Protesters angry over an amateurish American-made video denouncing Islam attacked the United States Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, killing an American employee, while Egyptian demonstrators stormed over the fortified walls of the United States Embassy here.
On the 11th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, the assaults were a violent reminder that the changes sweeping the region have hardly dispelled the rage against the United States still smoldering in pockets around the Arab world.
The mobs were set off by reports that a Florida pastor had proclaimed Sept. 11 “International Judge Muhammad Day” and was promoting the new video, which mocks Islam’s founding prophet.
In a statement Tuesday, the pastor, the Rev. Terry Jones of Gainesville, Fla., called the film “an American production, not designed to attack Muslims but to show the destructive ideology of Islam” and said it “reveals in a satirical fashion the life of Muhammad.”
He said the embassy attacks illustrated that Muslims “have no tolerance for anything outside of Muhammad” and called Islam “a total deception.”
Mr. Jones inspired deadly riots in Afghanistan in 2010 and 2011 by threatening to burn copies of the Koran and then burning one in his church. He also once reportedly hanged President Obama in effigy.
In Benghazi on Tuesday, protesters armed with automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades attacked the United States Consulate and set it on fire, Libyan officials said. Some news reports said that American guards inside the consulate had fired their weapons, and a brigade of Libyan security forces arriving on the scene had battled the attackers in the streets as well.
Officials of Libya’s Interior Ministry told reporters that an American employee of the consulate was fatally shot and that at least one other American staff member had been injured.
A State Department spokeswoman in Washington, Victoria Nuland, condemned the attacks and said that the United States was working with Libyan authorities to secure the compound. There was no immediate comment on, or confirmation of, the reports of casualties.
The death in Benghazi appears to be the first such fatality in a string of attacks and vandalism against foreign diplomatic missions in Libya in recent months. Since the fall of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, Libya’s transitional government has struggled to rebuild an effective police force, control the weapons that flooded the streets and restore public security.
Local Islamist militant groups capitalizing on the security vacuum have claimed responsibility for some attacks, and some reports Tuesday suggested that one such group, Ansar al-Sharia, had claimed credit for that day’s assault.
In Cairo, thousands of unarmed protesters had gathered outside the embassy during the day. By nightfall, some had climbed over the wall around the embassy compound and destroyed a flag hanging inside. The vandals replaced it with a black flag with an Islamic profession of faith — “There is no God but God, and Muhammad is his prophet” — favored by ultraconservatives and militants.
Embassy guards fired guns into the air, but a large contingent of Egyptian riot police on hand to protect the embassy evidently did not use their weapons against the crowd, and the protest continued, largely without violence, into the night.
A spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood, the mainstream Islamist group and the sponsors of Egypt’s first elected president, Mohamed Morsi, urged the United States government on Tuesday to prosecute the “madmen” behind the video, according to the English-language Web site of the state newspaper, Al Ahram.
The spokesman asked for a formal apology from the United States government and warned that events like the video were damaging Washington’s relations with the Muslim world. He also stressed that any protests should remain peaceful and respect property.
There should be “civilized demonstrations of the Egyptian people’s displeasure with this film,” the Muslim Brotherhood spokesman said, according to the Web site. “Any nonpeaceful activity will be exploited by those who hate Islam to defame the image of Egypt and Muslims.”
The American Embassy had released a statement shortly after noon that appeared to refer to Mr. Jones: “The United States Embassy in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims — as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions,” it said. “Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy. We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others.”
http://nyti.ms/OenZDa
but anyway what happened in Libya was nothing compared to America's war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.
