Ali al-Sallabi

Sallabi was placed under the Terrorist watch list and issued a travel ban by a number of Arab Nations following the 2017 Qatar diplomatic crisis. The crisis involves recent Qatari support for the Muslim Brotherhood, by advocating the release of Terror suspects such as Abdelhakim Belhadj who was part of Internationally recognized Terrorist organization Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.

Ali Mohammed Mohammed al-Salabi, was placed on a Travel Ban list in June 2017, due to his ties and links with terrorism by UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and a number of other countries, ( Including the Libyan Tobruk-based government ) that updated their Terrorism designated Organizations List, following the 2017 Qatar diplomatic crisis which the countries severed diplomatic ties due to its financial support for terrorism and other related activity.

As a member of the Muslim Brotherhood himself – a movement he had joined at an early age along with his father – Sallabi was welcomed by al-Qaradawi as well as by the Qatari ruling family, the most prominent patron of the international movement. Qatari-sponsored TV station al-Jazeera broadcast several appearances of Sallabi, in which he decidedly aligned himself with al-Qaradawi and his pro-Islamism ideological positions.

Equally controversial is Sallabi's affiliation with Yusuf al-Qaradawi. The Doha-based Egyptian theologian has been denied access to the UK, France, and the U.S. for his alleged terrorist and extremist ties. In fact, al-Qaradawi serves as the chairman of an organization – the Union of Good – including over 250 NGOs and charities that the U.S. Department of the Treasury has designated as terrorist entities for their support to Hamas.

During the Libyan Revolution of 2011 Sallabi was Qatar's main distributor of the Qatari government's military, humanitarian and cash aid to the Libyan rebels and much of this aid ended up in the hands of Islamists like Belhadj who commanded a rebel group in Libya's western mountains and Sallabi's brother Ismail, who commanded a rebel group from Benghazi. As he told reporters later on, Sallabi had asked Qatar's assistance during the initial phase of the revolution.

Sallabi acted as the key conduit to deliver Qatar's $2 billion aid through over a dozen shipments of "humanitarian aid, money, and arms" to the rebels. In October 2011, the international relations expert Daniel Wagner described Sallabi as Libya's most influential politician. However, The Washington Post columnist Marc Fisher reported that this privileged relationship with the Qatari rulers, that facilitated Qatar's role in ousting Gaddafi, also raised "suspicions among some Libyans about the gulf state's motives." Overall, Qatar provided Libyan rebels with "tens of millions of dollars in aid, military training and more than 20,000 tons of weapons."

In November 2011, after the death of Gaddafi, al-Sallabi announced the formation of the National Gathering for Freedom, Justice and Development, an Islamic party later renamed "Libyan National Party" that would follow "Turkish-style moderation" and would run in the country's upcoming elections.

In a 2011 interview with The Telegraph reporter Richard Spencer, Sallabi stressed that the National Gathering for Freedom, Justice and Development was a nationalist party with a political agenda centered on Libya's culture and the respect for Islamic principles. The cleric strongly denied his alleged Islamist leanings; yet, Sallabi claimed that the National Gathering intended to base Libya's new constitution on Sharia law.

In a February 2011 email, Jake Sullivan, Clinton's aide, presented Sallabi as "a key figure in the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood and Qaradawi's man in Libya." Sallabi's affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood was in fact solid and traced back to his youth. However, the Libyan National Party (LNP) founded by Sallabi also registered a high number of members of the al-Qaeda linked Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG). In a November 2007 video message, al-Qaeda deputy emir Ayman al-Zawahiri announced a formal merger between al-Qaeda and LIFG. In an email to Clinton dated July 3, 2011, Clinton's confidante Sidney Blumenthal reported that "according to sensitive sources, [the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group] maintained ties to al Qa'ida during their struggle with the forces of former dictator Muammar al Qaddafi."

The connection between the Muslim Brotherhood movement and the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group involved in the 2011 revolution to oust Gaddafi was later corroborated by a March 2011 Libyan Intelligence document.

According to Burr, Belhaji himself was freed from prison in Libya in an amnesty negotiated by Gaddafi's son in 2010.

In 2009 Al-Sallabi began acting as a mediator in negotiations between the Gaddafi government and the LIFG (whose members were in prison). However, J. Millard Burr, a senior fellow at the American Center for Democracy, reported that Sallabi became involved with Col. Gaddafi's son, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, in a Qatar-backed series of negotiations that aimed at having Islamist prisoners released from Libyan prisons during his time in Qatar. By 2006, "more than one hundred Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood] members were released," and "by 2008 hundreds of members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group had also been freed."

In 2004 Belhadj was arrested by Malaysian officials upon his arrival at the Kuala Lumpur airport, sent to Thailand upon extraordinary rendition on behalf of the U.S. and then sent back to Libya, where he was detained in harsh conditions for 6 years.

The Qatari rulers encouraged Sallabi to work on a reconciliation deal offered by Gaddafi once the sanctions were lifted on the Libyan regime in 2003. Sallabi then returned to Libya, where he directed a program to de-radicalize imprisoned militants.

Under the rule of Muammar Gaddafi, Sallabi was detained in the infamous Abu Salim prison for eight years. After being released, he studied theology in Saudi Arabia and Sudan, obtaining his doctorate in 1999 from the Omdurman Islamic University in Sudan.

After living for a time in Yemen, in 1999 Sallabi moved to Qatar where he studied under Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the spiritual head of the international Muslim Brotherhood who lives in Doha, the Qatari capital.

The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group is a terrorist group allied with al-Qaeda, that provided some of al-Qaeda the highest ranking and most trusted operatives. Belhajd had fought in Afghanistan and contributed to the growth of al-Qaeda in the country. Burr claims that Belhadj had followed Osama bin-Laden moving al-Qaeda's headquarters from Sudan to Afghanistan in 1996.

Dr. Ali Muhammad al-Sallabi, or al-Salabi (Arabic: علي محمد الصلابي ‎; born 1963 in Benghazi) is a Muslim historian, religious scholar and Islamist politician from Libya. He was arrested by the Gaddafi regime, then left Libya and studied Islam in Saudi Arabia and Sudan during the 1990s. He then studied in Qatar under Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the spiritual head of the international Muslim Brotherhood and returned to Libya during the 2011 overthrow of Gaddafi and distributed weapons, money and aid to Islamist groups in the country. His actions were criticized by members of the internationally recognized Libyan government under the National Transitional Council who he in turn criticized as being secular.