[16] Their first major public appearance occurred on 7 June 2012, when they led a rally of as many as two hundred pickup trucks mounted with artillery[17] along Benghazi's Tahrir Square and demanded the imposition of Sharia law.

"[17] The leader of Ansar al-Sharia, Sheikh Muhammad al-Zahawi, later gave an interview on a local TV station forbidding participation in Libya's first post-civil war parliamentary elections on the grounds that they were un-Islamic.

[22] Fawzi Bukatef, the leader in Benghazi of the rival Islamist militia February 17th Martyrs Brigade, claimed that members of the organisation had been responsible for the assassination of Abdul Fatah Younis, the commander of rebel forces during the Libyan Civil War.

"[25] Ansar al-Sharia used its online presence to denounce the 2013 capture and removal from Libya of al-Qaeda operative Abu Anas al-Libi, by American military forces.

[29] According to FDD's Long War Journal, Ansar al-Sharia issued a statement the next day, on 12 September 2012, asserting that it "didn't participate as a sole entity" and that the attack "was a spontaneous popular uprising" in reaction to the YouTube film trailer of Innocence of Muslims, considered to be anti-Islamic.

[30] On 6 August 2013, U.S. officials confirmed that Ahmed Abu Khattala, the Libyan leader of Ansar al-Sharia, had been charged with playing a significant role in the 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi.

According to NBC, the charges were filed under seal in Washington, D.C., in late July 2013[31] Khattala was arrested by U.S. Delta Force special operations personnel in a raid in Libya on 15 June 2014.

[43][44] After initial reverses, Ansar al-Sharia, and other Islamist and jihadist militias fighting together as the Shura Council of Benghazi Revolutionaries, launched a counteroffensive against units loyal to Haftar in the following months, largely driving them out of the city by August of the same year.

[45][46] After capturing several army bases in this offensive, Ansar al-Sharia posted images on the internet of the weapons and equipment that had been seized, including D-30 Howitzers, multiple rocket launchers, Strela 2 man-portable air-defense systems, large quantities of ammunition and vehicles.

[51] For several years thereafter the group retained its independence from IS,[27] but continued losses through casualties in fighting the Libyan National Army under Khalifa Haftar and further defections to IS, brought them to dissolution in 2017, with many of the remaining fighters going to IS.