Washington, D.C. - Today, Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA), Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, issued the following statement in response to recent reports of an imminent terrorist designation for Ansar al-Sharia.
“I welcome this morning’s report that Ansar al-Sharia will soon be designated by the State Department as a foreign terrorist organization. 16 months after the terrorist attacks in Benghazi, the Administration is confirming what it has long known - that Ansar al-Sharia carried out an attack against the United States that killed four Americans in Benghazi, Libya. The Obama Administration should be doing all it can to hunt down those responsible for this terrorist attack. I’m gravely concerned that they are not."
Note: After the initial attack on the Benghazi Special Mission Compound, the State Department Operations Center alerted senior Department officials, other agencies, and the White House that Ansar al-Sharia had claimed responsibility on Facebook and Twitter for the attack. On Nov. 27, 2012, then-United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice stated that, in fact, the talking points provided by the intelligence community, which formed the basis for her public comments on the Sunday talk shows of Sept. 11, 2012, were “incorrect in a key respect: there was no protest or demonstration in Benghazi.".
