Omar Elkeddi, a Libyan expatriate journalist based in Holland, described Hifter as very professional, very distinguished, and commanding great respect, the March 28 McClatchy report said. That report also quoted a former Hifter subordinate who said that Hifter had a "strong relationship with officers on many levels of rank."
El-Siddik Hifter, the general's son and one of the family members returning with him, serves as an aid, the BBC report says. Another of the general's 12 children, a university student, also returned with him, in part to assist with communications via Web sites and YouTube.
Exile Years
A report circulating in 1992 had claimed that Hifter's group had U.S. backing, even then, to topple Gaddafi. When answering a Washington Post reporter's question about that, Gaddafi refused to mention Hifter by name, but insultingly said, "Especially that one you mentioned because he was my son and I was like his spiritual father, I don't want to say anything about him." The two men were contemporaries, and Hifter had supported the coup that overthrew King Iris in 1969.
The April 20 New York Times report characterized Hifter as "widely popular among rebel fighters as a hero of the war Chad war, when he was a colonel in charge of Libyan troops who invaded" Chad. Libya and Chad fought an almost continuous series of wars for control border territory in Chad, known as the Aousou Strip. Chad, supported with varying levels of commitment over the years by France (and, with less flair, the United States), eventually prevailed militarily in the decisive battle of Maaten al-Sarra on Sept. 5, 1987, and finally in the International Court of Justice on Feb. 2, 1994.
Aly Abuzaakouk, a Libyan exile acquainted with Hifter for 20 years, told CNN that "Gadhafi never formally recognized there were any POWs in Chad" sending the signal that he didn't care if they were all executed." That prompted Hifter and his men to defect to Chad and fueled their willingness to fight against Gaddafi.
In exile, Hifter led the Libyan National Army (LNA), the military wing of the leading Gaddafi opposition group, the Libyan National Salvation Front (LNSF), founded in 1981 by Muhammad al-Muqaryif, according to a 1996 Congressional Research Service (CRS) account.
According to that account, Hifter began "preparing an army to march on Libya."
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