Washington: Marc Turi, an American arms dealer, has claimed that he was made a scapegoat by the Obama administration and the Hillary Clinton-led State Department in a weapons program to arm Libyan rebels that spiraled out of control.
“I would say, 100 pe rcent, I was victimised ... to somehow discredit me, to throw me under the bus — you know — to do whatever it took to protect their next presidential candidate,” he told Fox News in the video above.
Turi faced trial for illegally selling arms, but charges were dropped on October 5. He told Fox News it was because Democrats were worried about political blowback for Clinton if it emerged that the government had accidentally put weapons in the hands of America’s enemies.
The Obama administration had wanted to arm Libyan rebels to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi during the Arab Spring uprising, but were stopped by a UN sanction on arms sales to the country, he told the Fox News.
He said he came up with a plan to sell weapons to US allies in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates who would then pass them on to Libya, but was cut out of the deal by Clinton’s State Department and the CIA, who transported the weapons themselves, the Daily Mail reported.
“When this equipment landed in Libya, half went one way, and the half went the other way,” Turi had previously told Fox News, adding “The half that went the other way is the half that ended up in Syria.”
When Fox News asked Turi whether Al Qaeda, Ansar al-Sharia (the group behind the Benghazi attack), or ISIS got the weapons; he replied: “All of them, all of them, all of them.”
Turi said the Justice Department then attempted to scapegoat him, charging him with two counts of illegal arms dealing and two of lying on his State Department weapons application, despite him never actually selling anything.
“I am glad this horrific five-year ordeal is over and I am pleased to be able to move on with my life,” he told Fox News last week.
