{"id":395511,"date":"2011-04-25T01:37:38","date_gmt":"2011-04-25T01:37:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ghanamma.net\/2011\/04\/25\/benghazi-rebels-turn-waste-into-weapons\/"},"modified":"2011-04-25T01:37:38","modified_gmt":"2011-04-25T01:37:38","slug":"benghazi-rebels-turn-waste-into-weapons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/04\/25\/benghazi-rebels-turn-waste-into-weapons\/","title":{"rendered":"Benghazi rebels turn waste into weapons"},"content":{"rendered":"<div readability=\"91.367966164\">\n<div readability=\"81.5537593985\">\n<div readability=\"8\">\n<p>Massoud Ojeli and about 200 others volunteer at a Benghazi factory where makeshift weapons are made for rebels.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p><strong>STORY HIGHLIGHTS<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>About 200 men volunteer at a makeshift weapons factory<\/li>\n<li>They weld together arms out of spare parts for the rebels<\/li>\n<li>Many are soldiers who defected, but others are newcomers<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p><strong>Benghazi, Libya (CNN)<\/strong> &#8212; Two months ago, Massoud Ojeli was in college, studying English &#8212; but now, he works at a secret makeshift weapons factory in Libya, welding together spare parts to make arms for the country&#8217;s opposition forces.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a very weird feeling, but I&#8217;m proud of this,&#8221; the 20-year-old Ojeli says with a smile, in between his work crafting rocket launchers in a hot concrete warehouse space in the rebel stronghold of Benghazi.<\/p>\n<p>The rebels granted CNN rare access to a place where elbow grease and ingenuity turn damaged and dented old weapons into rough-and-ready killing machines.<\/p>\n<p>About 200 men volunteer at the factory, arriving around 8 a.m. and leaving around 3 p.m., when the sun is hottest over the dusty landscape.<\/p>\n<p>They don&#8217;t get paid, but there is no shortage of help. Ojeli&#8217;s father volunteers at the factory, too, and his two little brothers hang around to offer moral support.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I do this for my country,&#8221; Ojeli says.<\/p>\n<p>Many of the men are soldiers who have defected from the regime of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, but others are newcomers.<\/p>\n<p>Asked whether he knows what he&#8217;s doing at the weapons factory, Rami Tarhouni smiles and laughs.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t have idea,&#8221; he says. &#8220;I don&#8217;t have idea, but I&#8217;m trying.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>A few weeks ago, Tarhouni was an insurance agent. Another volunteer, Ali Abdul Salam, was in pharmaceuticals. He flashes a victory sign.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;People who&#8217;ve never seen weapons in their lives are making them from nothing,&#8221; says Col. Mohammed Algarobelli, who says he defected from Gadhafi&#8217;s air force.<\/p>\n<p>In one part of the factory is an old weapons pod from an old jet fighter. By the time they&#8217;re done with it &#8212; if all goes well &#8212; the volunteers will have turned it into 32 shoulder-fired missile launchers.<\/p>\n<p>Elsewhere, Soviet-era rocket launchers are broken up to fit on smaller vehicles like pickup trucks to go to the front lines.<\/p>\n<p>Using whatever they can get their hands on can pay off in a place like this; a panel fitted with household light switches is used to launch the rockets from the back of the trucks. There&#8217;s never a guarantee of success, however.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Sometimes we have something that doesn&#8217;t work,&#8221; Ojeli admits.<\/p>\n<p>He says if he had his way, Gadhafi would be gone and he could go back to college. Until then, he says, he&#8217;s keeping his new job.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/p>\n<p>More:<br \/>\n<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/rss.cnn.com\/~r\/rss\/edition_africa\/~3\/YpSc593s__c\/index.html\" title=\"Benghazi rebels turn waste into weapons\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Benghazi rebels turn waste into weapons<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p> Massoud Ojeli and about 200 others volunteer at a Benghazi factory where makeshift weapons are made for rebels. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-395511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Benghazi rebels turn waste into weapons - Ghanamma.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/04\/25\/benghazi-rebels-turn-waste-into-weapons\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Benghazi rebels turn waste into weapons - 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