By Walid Shoebat and Ben Barrack
**SHOEBAT EXCLUSIVE**

Last summer when CNN reporter Arwa Damon interviewed Ahmed Abu Khattala, the suspect behind Benghazi attacks (whom Obama just arrested) was freely roaming the streets in Libya without any concern for being picked up. Now the timing of the news of his arrest should be cause for skepticism.

Ahmed Abu-Khattala

Here’s why.

What is unknown by many in the western media is that Khattala’s role was with groups connected to Abu Obayda Bin Aljarah Brigade (and F17MB), the very group the Obama Administration assigned to and entrusted to watch over the U.S. embassy.

It was Ansar al-Sharia that prompted the attack and is actually made up of former members of Abu Obayda Bin Aljarah Brigade and the February 17 Martrys Brigade (F17MB).

F17MB even proudly displays the al-Qaeda banner on its facebook page:

Al-Qaeda photo proudly displayed on F17MB Facebook page.

And Khattala was once a leader in the same Al-Jarrah Brigade whose members co-mingle with F17MB to form none other than Ansar al-Sharia (See here and here). Here is an excerpt:

Ahmed Abu Khattala was a commander with the group that attacked the Benghazi compound. He had also been a leader in the group charged with protecting the compound.

Witnesses said they saw vehicles with the Ansar Al-Sharia logo at the scene of the attack, and that Ansar al-Sharia commander Ahmed Abu Khattala was present. Khattala was once the leader of Al-Jarrah Brigade, which formed the February 17 Martyrs Brigade.

As we maintain in our “Ironclad Report”, in order to get to the bottom of what happened in Benghazi on the night of September 11, 2012, a serious look to the east – in Egypt – is required, especially since the State Department itself conceded an Egyptian connection to the Benghazi attacks when it identified the Jamal Network as a terrorist organization Shoebat.com has reported on extensively. And in sworn Congressional testimony, ARB Chairman Thomas Pickering seemed to inadvertently admit an Egyptian connection to the Benghazi attacks. It is believed he was referring to the Jamal Network here:

Shoebat.com has done extensive work on Jamal’s much lesser known but perhaps even more dangerous partner in crime, Tarek Taha Abu Al-Azm. This is a terrorist figure most Americans have never heard of before. This is likely due – at least in part – to the fact that Al-Azm was trained by the U.S. Air Force and appears to have been a key figure in the Benghazi attacks. He was certainly implicated in the June 2012 bombing of the SMC building at the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi from a video clip we obtained from these terrorist sources (start at 2:30):

Who is Khattala?
Shoebat.com has written somewhat extensively about Ahmed Abu-Khattala [here, here, here, and here]

There is no disputing the fact that Khattala was at the scene of the Benghazi attacks and that he is an Ansar al-Sharia commander who was involved. There is also no disputing his close connections to the terrorist group the U.S. State Department put in charge of security of the SMC – F17MB.

OBAMA’S DOWNFALL IS NEAR
Khattala’s interview with Damon as part of a CNN special hosted by Erin Burnett came just as the IRS and Benghazi scandals were dogging the Obama administration last year. It was in the days after both Obama and Carney referred to them as “phony scandals” that CNN suddenly had the bombshell report ready to go, as Shoebat.com chronicled in great detail.

Burnett’s canned special in addition to a couple of other distractions at about the same time – A separate CNN news report of a bogus CIA scandal and on the same day, reports began to surface that U.S. Embassies all across the Middle East would be closing due to terror threats. This too smacked of suspicious timing and contrivance. Obama bemoaning the “phony scandals” known as Benghazi and IRS and recently, the VA scandal, the Bergdahl swap, the ISIS march on Mosul, and news of a lame excuse that Lois Lerner’s emails have been lost in a computer crash have been compounding Obama’s problems.

So why not attempt to neutralize all of those troubles with the announcement that a top Benghazi suspect had been arrested and is on his way to the U.S?

Conveniently, this figure has been roaming free and giving interviews to media entities like the AP, Reuters, Fox News and CBS for nearly two years without consequence and all before Damon sat down with him last year!?

In much the same way that questions about Bowe Bergdahl’s loyalty to his country blew up in Obama’s face, coupled with the latter’s elevating what appeared to be Bowe’s Taliban-sympathizing father in the Rose Garden, there at least exists the potential for something similar to happen relative to Khattala, whose background demonstrates how incestuous the relationships are between terrorist groups. The Administration’s failure began to show when the Administration approved The February 17 Martyrs Brigade (F17MB) to be responsible for providing security for the U.S. Special Mission Compound in Benghazi. The Obama Administration was intentionally deaf when in testimony before the House Oversight Committee last year, whistleblowers Gregory Hicks and Eric Nordstrom explained, but the decision was final and was not to be re-litigated:

In their exchange with Rep. Blake Farenthold, both Hicks and Nordstrom explained that F17MB were connected to the very terrorists F17MB were contracted to help protect Americans from:

Even the highly suspect Accountability Review Board (ARB) commissioned by then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton couldn’t put enough perfume on the stink of F17MB:

…the SMC’s dependence on the armed but poorly skilled Libyan February 17 Martyrs’ Brigade (February 17) militia members and unarmed, locally contracted Blue Mountain Libya (BML) guards for security support was misplaced.

That reality might just do more damage to Obama than the Bergdahl swap did.