Chemical security

Ex-Libyan intel official: IS has Gaddafi-era chemical weapons

A former Libyan intelligence official said in a recent TV interview that the country’s chemical weapons stores have fallen into the hands of the Islamic State, which has taken them to Syria.

“It is no secret that these gasses exist in Libya. They have taken it. To be fair, IS is not the only one,” Ahmad Qadhaf al-Dam told Egyptian Dream2 TV on January 18.

The clip was translated into English and posted online by the Middle East Media Research Institute.

Al-Dam, a cousin of deposed Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, explained that despite assertions that Libya’s remaining chemical weapon stockpiles had been destroyed as part of a 2014 deal, unspecified quantities remained untouched, “hidden in bases with which nobody was familiar, deep in the desert.”