Libya Rebel Commander Downplays Islamist Past

TRIPOLI, Libya - The rebels' Tripoli military commander, a former leader of an Islamic militant group that sent fighters to Iraq and Afghanistan, insisted Friday that the new Libya will shun extremism and won't 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 Moammar Gadhafi's regime.

But 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 Gadhafi.

"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.

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 Al-Qaida because he disagreed with its ideology of global jihad, or holy war, and wanted to focus on ridding Libya of Gadhafi.

After fighting Soviets in Afghanistan among other Arab fighters, Belhaj returned to Libya in 1990s to join the rest of the Islamic Fighting Group in fierce confrontations with the Gadhafi's regime. When he fled the country in mid 1990s, he moved from one country to the other until he fell in the hands of the CIA.

But once their enemy, Belhaj 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 Gadhafi."

He was sentenced to death after being sent back to Libya, but was pardoned in March 2010 after seven years in Tripoli's notorious Abu Salim prison. In March 2010, Belhaj was among 34 of the Islamic Fighting Group set free after he agreed to renounce violence as part of an initiative by Gadhafi's son Seif al-Islam, who at the time was considered a reformist voice in the regime.

However, he was quick to join the rebellion that broke out against Gadhafi in mid-February and he led a brigade of trained fighters in the western mountains in their march to the capital.

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

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 Gadhafi. The religious identity of the country will be left up to the people to choose."

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Michael was reporting in Cairo.