Mohammad Al-Kani, the leader of the "Al-Kaniyat" militia loyal to the warlord Khalifa Haftar, who was involved in the Tarhuna mass graves, has been murdered while he was resisting an armed group came to arrest him in his residence in Benghazi.
Pro-Haftar Journalist Mahmoud Al-Misrati said that “the storming of Al-Kani’s house was based on two warrants that had been issued by the civil and military judiciary due to complaints against the crimes attributed to Al-Kani.”
“One of Al-Kani's escorts was arrested and another was killed, in addition to the arrest of a number of his associates in separate areas of Benghazi, Ajdabiya and Tobruk, whose names were mentioned in a warrant from the Civil Prosecutor and the Military Prosecutor”, Al-Misrati added on his Facebook page.
Sources from Benghazi said that what happened was a planned assassination of Al-Kani and two of his companions at their residence in a farm in the Bouaatni area of Benghazi, denying what was reported about his resistance to a force that came to arrest him.
Since 2017, the Libyan Public Prosecutor has issued internal arrest warrants against 14 affiliated gunmen with the Al-Kani militia, while international arrest warrants were issued against the brothers Mohammad, Abdul Rahim and Abdul Azim Al-Kani.
It is reported that the dead man is one of the founders of the notorious Al-Kaniyat militia that ruled Tarhuna with an iron fist and caused the death and disappearance of hundreds of its sons before fleeing from it in June 2020 towards the east of the country after the defeat of their ally Haftar in his last war on Tripoli, in which the Al-Kaniyat militia was one of the most important groups of Haftar’s forces.
Observers say that the assassination of Al-Kani is not the first and will not be the last, as it was preceded by the assassination of the wanted criminal Mahmoud Al-Werfalli, and will be followed by the assassination of others accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity in an effort by Haftar to clean his ranks of the internationally wanted persons in preparation for the upcoming elections.
