However the organisation has a troubled history being under pressure from Muammar Gaddafi and shortly after the September 11 attacks, LIFG was banned worldwide (as an affiliate of al-Qaeda) by the UN 1267 Committee.

[4][5] Listed at the Foreign Terrorist Organizations,[6] the group has denied ever being affiliated with al-Qaeda, stating that it refused to join the global Islamic front Osama bin Laden declared against the west in 1998.

[9] LIFG claimed responsibility for a failed assassination attempt against Gaddafi in February 1996, which was in part funded by MI6 according to David Shayler, and engaged Libyan security forces in armed clashes during the mid-to-late 1990s.

[15] In an audio message published in November 2007 Ayman al-Zawahiri and Abu Laith al-Libi claimed that the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group had joined al-Qaeda.

As late as this August Zawahiri's video statements included praise of LIFG leaders, in what may have been a desperate attempt to head off the condemnation he could see coming.

[19][20][21] According to The Times:[20] In November last year Noman Benotman, ex-head of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group which is trying to overthrow the regime of Muammar Gaddafi, published a letter which asked Al-Qaeda to give up all its operations in the Islamic world and in the West, adding that ordinary westerners were blameless and should not be attacked.Noman Benotman's letter to Zawahiri was published in Akhbar Libya (News) as an op-ed clarification in November 2007.

Sergey Zakurko, the father to his Lithuanian mistress was suspended from his job at the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant (INPP) for fear that the link could pose a security threat.

[35] In September 2009 a new "code" for jihad, a 417-page religious document entitled "Corrective Studies", was published after more than two years of intense and secret talks between incarcerated leaders of the LIFG and Libyan security officials.

[38] In March 2011, members of the LIFG in Ajdabiya declared to the press that the group supports the revolt against Gaddafi's rule, and had placed themselves under the leadership of the National Transitional Council.

They also stated that the group had changed its name to Libyan Islamic Movement (al-Harakat al-Islamiya al-Libiya), had around 500–600 militants released from jail in recent years, and denied any past or present affiliation with Al-Qaeda.

In March 2011, Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, a leading member of the group, admit to the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore that his fighters had al-Qaeda links.