Slain Ambassador Stevens Said He Was on Al Qaeda List
Source: Slain Ambassador Stevens Said He Was on Al Qaeda List
In the months leading up to his death, Chris Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, worried about constant security threats in Benghazi and mentioned that his name was on an al Qaeda hit list, a source familiar with his thinking told CNN.
Stevens spoke about a rise in Islamic extremism and al Qaeda’s growing presence in Libya, the source said.
Matthew Olsen, director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, said it is unlikely that Stevens and his security team were killed by random protesters.
“I would say yes, they were killed in the course of a terrorist attack on our embassy,” Olsen said Wednesday at a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing.
Stevens and three other Americans were killed September 11 during a large protest at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi. Demonstrators were angry about a film made in the United States that mocked the Muslim Prophet Mohammed.
Sources tracking militant Islamist groups in the region said that a pro-al Qaeda group was the chief suspect and that the attack appeared to have been planned. The attackers used the protest as a diversion, the sources said.