1. Khalifa Haftar is a Libyan-American politician, military officer, and the commander of the Tobruk-based Libyan National Army.
53 Facts About Khalifa Haftar
1. 2.
Khalifa Haftar has been the de facto ruler of the east of Libya since 2017, governing the region as a military dictatorship under the LNA.
3.
Khalifa Haftar served in the Libyan Army under Muammar Gaddafi, and took part in the coup that brought Gaddafi to power in 1969.
4.
Khalifa Haftar participated in the Libyan contingent against Israel in the Yom Kippur War of 1973.
5.
Khalifa Haftar was released around 1990 in a deal with the United States government and spent nearly two decades living in the US in Langley, Virginia, and gained US citizenship.
6.
Khalifa Haftar held a senior position in the forces that overthrew Gaddafi in 2011, during the First Libyan Civil War.
7.
Khalifa Haftar launched a campaign against the GNC and its Islamic fundamentalist allies.
8.
Khalifa Haftar's campaign allowed elections to replace the GNC but then developed into the Second Libyan Civil War.
9.
In November 2021, Khalifa Haftar announced his candidacy for the presidential election in December 2021 before it was postponed.
10.
Besides his native Arabic, Khalifa Haftar speaks English, Italian and Russian, and some French.
11.
Khalifa Haftar is expected to renounce his US citizenship before the next Libyan election.
12.
Khalifa Belqasim Omar Haftar was born on 7 November 1943 in Ajdabiya in Cyrenaica, British-occupied Libya to an Arab Bedouin family belonging to the Firjan tribe.
13.
Khalifa Haftar studied at al-Huda School in Ajdabiya in 1957 and then moved to Derna to obtain his secondary education between 1961 and 1964.
14.
Khalifa Haftar joined the Benghazi Military University Academy on 16 September 1964 and graduated from there in 1966.
15.
Shortly thereafter, Khalifa Haftar became a top military officer for Gaddafi.
16.
Khalifa Haftar commanded Libyan troops supporting Egyptian troops entering Israeli-occupied Sinai during the Yom Kippur War in 1973.
17.
Khalifa Haftar was a member of the Revolutionary Command Council which governed Libya in the immediate aftermath of the coup.
18.
Gaddafi demanded Khalifa Haftar's soldiers be returned to Libya, but the Americans arranged for them to fly to Zaire instead.
19.
In March 1996, Khalifa Haftar took part in a failed uprising against Gaddafi in the mountains of eastern Libya, before returning to the US.
20.
Khalifa Haftar moved to suburban area outside Washington, DC, living in Falls Church, Virginia until 2007.
21.
Khalifa Haftar then moved to a five-bedroom house in Vienna, Virginia.
22.
Khalifa Haftar voted in Virginian elections in 2008 and 2009.
23.
Khalifa Haftar spelled his name "Hifter" in legal documents in the United States.
24.
On 17 November 2011, Khalifa Haftar was chosen as the overall commander of the new Libyan Army due to his military experience and loyalty to the revolution that overthrew Gaddafi.
25.
In February 2014, Khalifa Haftar appeared in a televised announcement to reveal that the General National Congress, the elected parliament which had recently unilaterally extended its mandate, had been dissolved.
26.
Khalifa Haftar called for a caretaker government to oversee new elections, and urged Libyans to revolt against the GNC, the mandate of which was still in force at the time.
27.
Khalifa Haftar's announcement was dismissed with great skepticism by the then acting Prime Minister Ali Zeidan.
28.
Khalifa Haftar's actions were condemned as a "coup attempt" and "ridiculous".
29.
Khalifa Haftar's strategy was to embark on a series of "town hall" meetings around Libya and, with the support of fellow ex-officers from the military, to secretly build an army.
30.
At the time of the Benghazi assault, Khalifa Haftar, who had already been the target of assassination attempts, reportedly explained to a friend that he was fully aware of the personal safety risks involved in his actions.
31.
Khalifa Haftar was officially made commander of the Libyan National Army by the internationally recognized House of Representatives on 2 March 2015.
32.
For instance, as of early 2016 Khalifa Haftar's forces were reported to have bombed an Islamist group known as the Shura Council of Mujahideen in Derna who was behind the successful ouster of IS from Derna.
33.
Furthermore, experts have questioned whether the LNA could establish its control over the entire national territory, or whether Khalifa Haftar would allow any military or elected political leader other than himself to guide a national army or government should that opportunity materialize in the future through a new general election.
34.
Khalifa Haftar remains resolute that one of the aims of Operation Dignity is to completely dismantle the Libyan branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as what he considers to be any other Islamist terrorist organizations within Libya.
35.
However, in recent years journalists and critics have observed that, in spite of his formal anti-Islamism mission, Khalifa Haftar has continuously cooperated with Salafi organizations based in eastern Libya.
36.
Some Salafi groups allied with Khalifa Haftar were part of the militias based in Barqa that have fought under his leadership and eventually spread in Benghazi, Jabal al-Akhdar, and Ajdabiya.
37.
Khalifa Haftar receives private support by the leaders of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for the assault on Tripoli.
38.
In November 2016, Khalifa Haftar made a second trip to Russia to meet with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu.
39.
In May 2019, Amnesty International accused Khalifa Haftar of participating in actions that amounted to war crimes during his battle for control of Tripoli.
40.
Khalifa Haftar was the effective head of the de facto "Tobruk" system of government of much of the east and some of the south and west parts of Libya during the Second Libyan Civil War.
41.
On 27 April 2020, Khalifa Haftar made a televised address where he declared that the LNA would accept a popular mandate to govern Eastern Libya, making Khalifa Haftar the de facto leader.
42.
Khalifa Haftar's announcement raised the question of the outcome of the Libyan House of Representatives, who up until Khalifa Haftar's announcement was the governing civilian government for areas controlled by the LNA.
43.
On September 23,2021, Khalifa Haftar temporarily withdrew his post from the command of the LNA for a potential run in the 2021 Libyan general election, which was due to take place December 23.
44.
On 12 April 2024, Brinkema terminated the lawsuits against Khalifa Haftar, stating that she had no jurisdiction to preside over alleged war crimes in Libya.
45.
Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar has been called a "Libyan oil magnate" by international press articles.
46.
In October 2021, the Israel Hayom reported that Belqasim Khalifa Haftar signed a contract worth "tens of millions of dollars in fees" with an Israeli consulting firm to run his father's presidential campaign.
47.
In November 2021, Saddam Khalifa Haftar secretly visited Israel on behalf of his father, allegedly seeking military aid and diplomatic assistance in return of normalizing relations.
48.
Khalifa Haftar allegedly had contacts with Mossad prior to Saddam's visit.
49.
Later that same month, Saddam Khalifa Haftar allegedly guaranteed the safety of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi and Bashir Saleh Bashir to register themselves as president candidates in Sabha.
50.
In December 2022, Saddam Khalifa Haftar attempted to seize control of banking institutions in Cyrenaica.
51.
In January 2023, Khalifa Haftar pledged to withdraw from the Libyan presidential election on the condition that his sons, Saddam and Belqasim, are allowed to run.
52.
In December 2023, Khalifa Haftar was accused of leading operations that intercepted and forcibly returned refugees trying to reach Europe.
53.
On 12 April 2018, it was reported that Khalifa Haftar was in a coma after suffering a stroke and was hospitalized under intensive care in Paris.