"Our Man in Tripoli": US-NATO Sponsored Islamic Terrorists Integrate Libya's Pro-Democracy Opposition

[URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Defense"]
Department of Defense[/URL] spokesmen routinely claim that the Guantanamo captives were trained using the manual.[SUP][5][/SUP][SUP][6][/SUP][SUP][7][/SUP][SUP][8][/SUP]Claims Guantanamo captives were trained using the manual

Mission

Main Mission

• The overthrow of the godless regimes and their replacement with an Islamic regime.
  

Other missions

• Gathering information about the enemy, the land, the installations, and the neighbors.
  
• Kidnapping enemy personnel, documents, secrets, and arms.
  
• Assassinating enemy personnel as well as foreign tourists.
  
• Freeing the brothers who are captured by the enemy.
  
• Spreading rumors and writing statements that instigate people against the enemy.
  
• Blasting and destroying the places of amusement, immorality, and sin; not a vital target.
  
• Blasting and destroying the embassies and attacking vital economic centers.
  
• Blasting and destroying bridges leading into and out of the cities
  

Actions after capture

Owners

• Abu Hamza al Masri - Convicted of possession of a terrorist encyclopedia, among other charges, on February 7, 2006[SUP][citation needed][/SUP]
  

Arrests

See also

• Management of Savagery
  

References

• Jump up^ Spc. Shanita Simmons (August 14, 2007). "Manchester Manual: The Code of Conduct for terrorism". Joint Task Force GuantanamoPublic Affairs. Retrieved 2008-02-22. ""The Manchester Manual is literally an overarching basic guide that simply covers just about everything. It covers how to conduct general combat operations, how to escape and evade capture and how to behave in captivity," said the JTF source. "There is even a chapter on how to poison yourself using your own feces.""
  
• Jump up^ Donna Miles (June 29, 2005). "Al Qaeda Manual Drives Detainee Behavior at Guantanamo Bay". American Forces Press Service.Archived from the original on 17 September 2008. Retrieved 2008-09-10. "This instruction comes straight from the pages of an official al Qaeda training manual, and officials at the detention facility at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, say they see clear evidence that detainees are well-versed in its contents." Works related to Al Qaeda Manual Drives Detainee Behavior at Guantanamo Bay at Wikisource
  
• Jump up^ BBC News website on Handbook seizure in Manchester
  
• ^ Jump up to:[SUP]a[/SUP] [SUP]b[/SUP] [SUP]c[/SUP] [SUP]d[/SUP] The Al Qaeda Handbook(US Dept of Justice Website
  
• Jump up^ "Briefing on Detainee Operations at Guantanamo Bay". United States Department of Defense. February 13, 2004. Archived from the original on 13 February 2008. Retrieved 2008-02-22.
  
• Jump up^ "United States v. David Hicks: Prosecution response to defense motion for dismissal for denial of a right to a speedy trial". United States Department of Defense. 18 October 2004. Retrieved 2008-02-22. "Indeed, a far longer period would be justified in the current instance. The United States has undertaken painstaking intelligence-gathering and interrogation with respect to hundreds of enemy combatants and suspected members of al Qaida, a highly disciplined organization whose agents span the globe and operate in total secrecy. See generally al Qaida Training Manual ("Manchester Manual"), available at www.usdoj.gov/ag/trainingmanual.htm."
  
• Jump up^ Jane Mayer (July 11, 2005). "The Experiment: The military trains people to withstand interrogation. Are those methods being misused at Guantánamo?". New Yorker magazine. Archived from the original on 3 March 2008. Retrieved 2008-02-22. "The military officials who run the Guantánamo prison maintain that almost all of the detainees' charges are untrue. A training manual written by Al Qaeda leaders, which is known as the Manchester Manual, because a copy of it was confiscated during a 2000 raid in England, counsels Islamists to "complain of mistreatment while in prison" and say that "torture was inflicted on them." Bumgarner said, "They are trained to make false accusations. It's part of their P.R.""
  
• Jump up^ "The detainees". Newshour (PBS). February 13, 2004. Retrieved 2008-02-22. "We applied very strict criteria to bring them there. There's a document called the Manchester Manual that was picked up in a search in Manchester and has surfaced in Afghanistan and elsewhere. It's the al-Qaida manual, basically. There is a very lengthy chapter on counter-interrogation techniques. These are sophisticated terrorists who know how to avoid interrogation. We are learning about them every day; we're learning more about from other intelligence sources and we work extremely hard to find out who these people are. We do not want to hold one person in Guantanamo one day longer than they need to be held."
  
• Jump up^ http://freehicham.co.uk/about-2/
  

Quote:

British MPs to ask why al-Qaeda kingpin Abu Anas al-Libi was given asylum in the UK

Questions will be asked in Parliament as to why Abu Anas al-Libi, who was captured by US special forces in Libya, had previously been allowed to live in Britain from where he eventually fled

By Ashraf Abdulwahhab, in Tripoli, Richard Spencer and Tom Whitehead

8:24PM BST 06 Oct 2013


MPs are to question the Home Secretary Theresa May as to why one of the world's most wanted al Qaeda terror suspects, captured by US special forces this weekend, was previously given political asylum and allowed to live in Britain.

Abu Anas al-Libi, a trusted lieutenant of Osama bin Laden and at one time al-Qaeda's chief computer expert, was snatched on Saturday in a US Delta Force operation in the Libyan capital Tripoli.

Al-Libi, whose real name is Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqaie, was given asylum in Britain in 1995 and it is alleged he helped plan the twin attacks on the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in 1998 in which 224 people were killed.

According to a former FBI official he was taken in for questioning by police in Manchester after the bombings but was released and fled the country. When his house in the city was finally raided by police, they discovered a 180-page al-Qaeda manual on methods of carrying out terror attacks and assassinations.

On Sunday it was revealed that al-Libi had been hiding "in plain sight" in Tripoli despite a $5 million bounty having been put on his head by the US.

He is thought to have returned to Libya as the uprising against Col Muammar Gaddafi began in February 2011 and had been living with his family in the east of the city.
His son, Abdullah al-Ruqaie, described the Delta Force snatch to the The Daily Telegraph saying that it included men speaking Libyan dialect Arabic among the squad suggesting a degree of cooperation with the local authorities which they later denied.
"He was coming back from the mosque, at 6:38 in the morning," he said.
"Four vehicles stopped by his car, in front of the house, and ten masked and unmasked men came out, broke the car window on the steering wheel side, drugged him, and took him.
"He was kidnapped in front of the house not inside. If he had been kidnapped inside the house we would not have let them take him without a fight."
Al Libi was last night "lawfully detained by the U.S. military in a secure location outside of Libya", according to the Pentagon.
But questions will now be asked how he came to be given political asylum in Britain, despite his known involvement in a Libyan terrorist organisation and a long previous association with bin Laden, and how he was able to flee the country.
Keith Vaz, the chairman of the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, said al-Libi's case will be raised with the Home Secretary, when she appears before MPs on Tuesday.
He said he wanted to ensure all the proper processes were undertaken with a man who was possibly known to the security and intelligence agencies at the time.
"We will want to look at the background of this case and will question the Home Secretary about it," said Mr Vaz.

Quote:

Abu Anas al-Libi, al Qaeda kingpin caught in Libya, was released by British police before going on the run

A former FBI official has claimed Abu Anas al-Libi was taken in for questioning by British police but released from custody in the 1990s

By Jon Swaine, New York

7:02PM BST 06 Oct 2013



Abu Anas al-Libi, the al-Qaeda lieutenant seized in Tripoli, was released from questioning by police in Manchester and has spent the past 14 years on the run after fleeing his home in Britain, according to a former FBI official.

Al-Libi, 49, won political asylum in Britain in 1995, after being thrown out of al-Qaeda's headquarters in Sudan by Osama bin Laden in response to a request from the Sudanese government.

Sudan was under intense pressure from Muammar Gaddafi, then Libya'spresident, to stop harbouring Libyan al-Qaeda operatives who wanted him overthrown and replaced with an Islamist regime.

An apologetic Bin Laden gave al-Libi and his compatriots bags of cash and scattered them around the world. Al-Libi ended up in Manchester, a known base of the al-Qaeda-linked Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.

By then, according to US prosecutors, he was already a leading figure in an al-Qaeda plot to mount a spectacular attack against US interests in Africa, in revenge for American military action in Somalia.


Identifiable by a scar on the left side of his face, al-Libi had earned respect within the terrorist network for his sophisticated computer skills and outstanding performance at training camps.
He had begun conducting "photographic surveillance of the US Embassy in Nairobi" in late 1993, as part of a plot to attack it, according to Jamal al-Fadl, an al-Qaeda member turned US government witness.
His photographs were processed for the network's chiefs in a makeshift dark room in the apartment of L'Houssaine Kherchtou, a Moroccan al-Qaeda fighter and once Bin Laden's pilot, al-Fadl said.
Later, "Bin Laden looked at the picture of the American embassy and pointed to where a truck could go as a suicide bomber," al-Fadl told a judge.
Four years later, the twin bombings of the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killed 224 people and injured more than 4,000 and gave a clear statement of al-Qaeda's future intent.
Al-Libi was one of 20 al-Qaeda lieutenants named as Bin Laden's co-defendants in a criminal indictment for the bombings filed in a Manhattan court by Bill Clinton's administration later that year.
Ali Soufan, a former FBI counterterror official, said he was among a small group of agents who rushed across the Atlantic in 1999 or 2000 when told Al-Libi was in Manchester, and was to be arrested.
Contrary to reports he escaped capture, al-Libi was seized and his home raided, Mr Soufan claimed. Yet he was released after no "smoking gun" linking him to the attacks was found in the search.
In his memoir The Black Banners, Mr Soufan said that John O'Neill, then the head of the FBI's Bin Laden unit, warned British detectives that they were making a serious mistake by letting him go.
"You can be certain he'll skip town before we have time to sort through all the evidence and find something which I'm sure is there," Mr O'Neill, who died in the September 11 attack, reportedly said.
It is unclear why al-Libi would not have been extradited to the US, where he had already been indicted for the attacks. He indeed fled, according to Mr Soufan, evading surveillance by a team following him.
Closer inspection of al-Libi's possessions turned up a book later dubbed the "Manchester Manual", which contained instructions to al-Qaeda operatives for carrying out attacks and enduring interrogation.
This evidence that terrorist operatives had been trained to avoid disclosing information if arrested was later cited by George W. Bush's administration as justifying the torture of al-Qaeda suspects.
After the September 11 attacks, al-Libi was placed on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists list. A $25 million reward, later reduced to $5 million, was offered for information leading to his capture.
Only three of the 21 al-Qaeda operatives named in the 1998 indictment now remain at large. Eight, including Bin Laden, have been killed. One died awaiting trial and nine, including al-Libi, are in jail or custody awaiting trial.
It was alleged in 2002 that al-Libi was a member of a Libyan al-Qaeda cell that received hundreds of thousands of pounds from British intelligence to assassinate Gaddafi in an ultimately unsuccessful plot.
The allegation was made in a book by two French intelligence experts, who claimed the mid-1990s plot led Britain to play down the first international arrest warrant for bin Laden, issued by Libya in 1998.

Quote:15 years on... How America finally ended a terrorist's life of freedom

The lengthy operation to capture Abu Anas al-Libi ended as he returned to his home in the Libyan capital Tripoli from morning prayers

The whereabouts of Abu Anas al-Libi had been reported to western intelligence officials more than a year ago Photo: AFP








By Richard Spencer, Ashraf Abdulwahhab in Tripoli and Magdy Samaan

9:55PM BST 06 Oct 2013


The operation was as swift as it was inevitable. The whereabouts of the man known as Abu Anas al-Libi had been reported to western intelligence officials more than a year ago as he followed a regular routine from his Tripoli home.

One of America's most wanted men, with a $5 million price on his head, was living within a mile of the former, now ransacked British Embassy.

According to one report, the Libyan government, under its former leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, had even given out his address to those who asked.

That freedom ended at dawn on Saturday. He was driving back from morning prayers to his villa in the upmarket eastern suburb of Ben Ashour when the American "Delta Force" special operations unit pounced, as his wife watched from the window.

"I saw the cars stop him. They took his pistol and then they put a bag on his head and pushed him into a car," she said. His brother, Abdulbaset, who relayed her account to The Daily Telegraph, did not give her name, in keeping with conservative local custom.

Within a few hours al-Libi had been spirited out of the country. The Pentagon would not say where he was being held but there are US navy warships within helicopter range in the Mediterranean, and US military bases in southern Italy.
The operation to capture al-Libi, whose real name is Nazih Abdulhamed al-Ruqaie, began 15 years earlier, when he was living in exile in Manchester.
[SUP]The 1998 bombing of Nairobi for which al-Libi was indicted (AFP)[/SUP]
Investigators looking into the bombing of the American embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es-Salaam, Tanzania, on August 7 1998 believed he was one of the operation's planners.
They believed he had travelled to East Africa at the behest of Osama bin Laden, with whom he had worked closely when al-Qaeda was based in the Sudan, to photograph the targets. A computer expert, he was by now on the "Shura Council" and a senior computer expert of the terror group.
He fled Britain in 1999, in circumstances that remain controversial, and his seizure on Saturday was his next confirmed sighting. But reports had reached western officials last year that he had moved back to Libya during or even before the 2011 uprising against Gaddafi's rule and was moving freely around the capital. One of his sons had been killed in the fighting in Tripoli in August of that year.
At the time of the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi last September which killed the ambassador, Christopher Steven, al-Libi was suspected of helping to re-establish al-Qaeda in post-Gaddafi Libya.
He now lived with his wife and one of his sons, Abdullah. It was outside their home that the operation to seize him moved into gear on Saturday morning.
[SUP]Abdullah, one of Abu Anas al-Libi's sons, at the scene where his father was captured (AFP)[/SUP]
Abdulbaset al-Ruqaie said his brother was parking his car outside the house when three or four SUV-type cars screeched in and surrounded him.
Five men emerged wearing balaclavas and smashed the car's side window.
They managed to grab his weapon - not an unusual item for Libyan men to carry in the chaotic post-Gaddafi years - and pull him out and into their own convoy before speeding off.
Mr al-Ruqaie said that at first he thought al-Libi had been a victim of one of the numerous feuds between competing militias, some Islamist, who are vying for power in Libya.
"I thought it was a kind of misunderstanding between the brigades," he said. "I thought it was a normal Libyan kidnap, not that it was American commandos."
The truth was not confirmed by the US authorities until almost 24 hours later. "As the result of a US counterterrorism operation, Abu Anas al Libi is currently lawfully detained by the US military in a secure location outside of Libya," a Pentagon spokesman said.
The fact that the operation happened at almost exactly the same time another raid, by US Navy Seals, was taking place on an al-Qaeda base in coastal Somalia was described as "coincidence". There was no immediate suggestion that al-Libi was in contact with al-Shabaab, the Somali branch of al-Qaeda.
Al-Libi's son, Abdullah, said his father had been preparing to launch a formal legal case to determine his innocence and prevent his extradition to the United States. He said his father had worked in the oil industry after returning to Libya.
"This operation was committed by the government," he said. "There is no difference between this government and Gaddafi. It should leave as Gaddafi left."
Like him, Hashem al-Bishr, head of the government-backed Supreme Security Council, also claimed that the men who seized al-Libi were Libyan, though led by an American.
A spokesman for Prime Minister Ali al-Zeidan denied that the government was involved in or had been informed of the arrest. Mr Zeidan is already under attack from Islamists for being too close to the United States, and by last night support groups demanding al-Libi's freedom were already springing up on the internet.
The spokesman defended the government's failure to arrest him before.
"Do you think that the Libyan government knows or follows every citizen?" he said. "He didn't do anything inside Libya. He just lived a secure life, like a normal citizen."
Washington welcomed what it said was a further success in its campaign to eliminate al-Qaeda's top leadership.
"We hope that this makes clear that the United States of America will never stop in the effort to hold those accountable who conduct acts of terror," John Kerry, the secretary of state, said. Chuck Hagel, the defence secretary, said: "These operations in Libya and Somalia send a strong message to the world that the United States will spare no effort to hold terrorists accountable, no matter where they hide or how long they evade justice."

Quote:Wife: Captured 'most wanted terrorist' al Libi had left al Qaeda

By Jomana Karadsheh. Paul Cruickshank and Catherine E. Shoichet, CNN
October 7, 2013 -- Updated 0112 GMT (0912 HKT)Abu Anas al Libi, a key al Qaeda operative wanted for his role in the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, has been captured in a U.S. special operations forces raid in Tripoli, Libya, U.S. officials told CNN on Saturday, October 5.

• Official: Commandos from the elite U.S. Army Delta Force conducted the raid
  
• Abu Anas al Libi's wife says some of the men in the raid seemed to be Libyans
  
• The operation was a "masterpiece," Libyan counterterrorism analyst says
  
• Al Libi is suspected of playing a part in 2 U.S. embassy bombings in Africa in 1998
  

Tripoli, Libya (CNN) -- The wife of an accused al Qaeda operative captured by U.S. forces told CNN that masked men ambushed her husband when he was on the way home from morning prayers.
While U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel called Abu Anas al Libi "one of the world's most wanted terrorists," al Libi's wife described him a different way in an exclusive interview with CNN on Sunday.
Umm Abdul Rahman called al Libi an innocent man, adding that he left al Qaeda in 1996 and had no connection to the twin 1998 bombings at U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
"I am sure of what I am saying -- he did not take part in any bombing anywhere in the world," Rahman said. "He participated in the jihad in Afghanistan. .... He was a member of al-Qaeda and he was personal security for (Osama) bin Laden -- that's true -- but he did not take part in any operation."
Al Libi was among those indicted for the embassy attacks by a federal grand jury in New York, and U.S. officials and terrorism analysts hailed news of his capture.
Al Libi's wife watched men capture him
Meanwhile, Libya's interim government distanced itself from the operation and called the U.S. capture a kidnapping.
Rahman told CNN she didn't know who had taken her husband -- only that the raid she watched happen from her Tripoli home happened very quickly.
Al Libi was returning to his house at about 6:30 a.m. Saturday (12:30 a.m. ET) when a group of at least 10 men in four vehicles surprised him, his wife told CNN. Some of the men were wearing masks, while others weren't, she said. Those men looked like Libyans to her and they spoke Arabic with Libyan accents, she said.
"What I saw were Libyans. Maybe they had Americans with them, but I didn't see them because there was more than one car. They say there were 10 people involved, but I believe there were more than 10," Rahman said. "I couldn't count them because there were many of them. I can't confirm if they were Americans or not, but what I saw were Libyans. "
Elite team involved in capture
On Sunday, a U.S. official said commandos from the elite U.S. Army Delta Force had snatched the 49-year-old al Qaeda operative.
Tripoli has requested an explanation from Washington about the raid, the country's state news agency reported Sunday.
The mission was conducted with the knowledge of the Libyan government, said one U.S. official. The Pentagon said the U.S. military was holding al Libi in a "secure location" outside Libya. A U.S. official told CNN that he was taken to a U.S. Navy warship after his capture.
U.S. forces strike in Libya, Somalia, capture al Qaeda operative
"It's a masterpiece how someone can craft such an operation," said Libyan counterterrorism analyst Noman Benotman, who is also a former jihadist associate of al Libi.
Benotman is president of the Quilliam Foundation, a London-based counterterrorism think tank. He is also a former senior member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which al Libi joined in the mid-1990s before gravitating back toward al Qaeda.
Al Libi had been living in that still unsettled nation, more or less in the open, for more than a year despite his alleged associations. According to Benotman, it is unlikely he was still playing an active role for al Qaeda.
His wife agreed, saying he was living a normal life, was not in hiding and had reapplied for a job with the oil ministry.
She said he has a severe case of hepatitis C and she worries about his health.
Next stop, New York?
Al Libi has been all around the globe -- Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan, Kenya, Britain, Iran and beyond -- making friends with some of the world's most notorious terrorists and enemies with the United States and its allies.
On Saturday, his odyssey ended where it began: in his homeland of Libya.
His next destination? He eventually will be taken to New York, a source with knowledge of the capture and proceedings told CNN, though the exact timing is unclear.
The Obama administration has activated the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group to interview him for intelligence purposes while he remains in U.S. military custody, U.S. officials told CNN. The team is led by the FBI and includes CIA and other intelligence agencies. After the interviews are concluded, he would be transferred to civilian custody and brought to New York to face federal charges, the officials said.
U.S. authorities have long wanted al Libi to stand trial in an American court to face charges for his alleged role in the U.S. embassy bombings that left well over 200 dead and thousands wounded.
Edith Bartley lost both her father, Julian Bartley, and her brother, Julian Jr., in the attack in Nairobi, Kenya. Her father was the U.S. Embassy's counsel general; her 20-year-old brother was an intern there.
"We know that this is a firm signal around the globe that as our government is still wading through a standstill right now, that we are still vigilant as a country and focused on international terror, and we're not going to step down at all," Bartley told CNN's "New Day Sunday."
Bartley said while she was relieved when Osama bin Laden -- also indicted in the embassy attacks -- was killed in 2011, she's also happy that al Libi was taken into custody.
"Certainly, we are very pleased to know that we can have someone who is captured, and for the wealth of information that may be available to our intelligence community and our military personnel," she said. "You can't put a price on that."
CNN's Nic Robertson, a veteran of covering al Qaeda, said al Libi's arrest is a "huge deal."
"He's a big player in al Qaeda (and) in one of the key target areas, in the north of Africa," he said. "This is a significant step."
Stops in Afghanistan, Britain, Iran and beyond
The FBI's page on al Libi -- part of its roster of "Most Wanted Terrorists" and noting the $5 million reward being offered for information leading directly to his apprehension -- says that he is accused in a "conspiracy to kill United States nationals, to murder, to destroy buildings and property of the United States, and to destroy the national defense utilities of the United States."
Born Nazih Abd al Hamid al Ruqhay, al Libi joined al Qaeda soon after its founding, as the terrorist organization built up its presence in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
When the group's late leader Osama bin Laden relocated to Khartoum, Sudan, in 1992, al Libi went with him.
As the 1990s continued, al Libi came to be known as one of al Qaeda's most capable operatives, especially for his expertise in surveillance and computers.
A fellow al Qaeda operative at one point testified that al Libi was in Nairobi in 1993, allegedly checking out possible targets, including the U.S. Embassy.
The blast in Kenya's capital five years later ended up killing more than 200 people and wounding 5,000. The Tanzania blast went off nearly simultaneously, leaving 11 people dead.
His wife denied that he had any role in any bombing and said that after he returned to Libya in 2011 during the revolution, he had been asking the Libyan government to help him clear his name. She did admit that he had belonged to al Qaeda, but said he was a personal guard for bin Laden until he left the terror group in 1996.
Africa marks 10th anniversary of U.S. embassy bombings
Al Libi at one point joined the jihadist Libyan Islamic Fighters Group before moving to Qatar and then Britain, settling in Manchester.
It was there, in 2000, that police raided his home.
Authorities uncovered a document that became known as the "Manchester Manual" -- hundreds of pages of guidance on carrying out a terrorist campaign. Among them: a document that called for "attacking, blasting and destroying" embassies.
But what they didn't find was al Libi, who had left the country before the raid.
He is thought to have spent time subsequently in Afghanistan before fleeing to Iran after the fall of the Taliban. Western intelligence sources believe he remained in that country before going home to Libya.
After years in native Libya, al Libi in U.S. hands
In September 2012, CNN was first to report that al Libi was alive and well in Libya. Western intelligence had tracked his movements in Tripoli, and had even taken surveillance photos.
Western intelligence sources said that there was concern that al Libi was working to establish an al Qaeda network in the North African nation, but no evidence has since materialized that he continued to be involved in terrorist operations after he returned to Libya.
So how long had he been home?
In December 2010, before the outbreak of the unrest that ended with Moammar Gadhafi's death, Libyan authorities told a United Nations committee that al Libi had returned, even giving a Tripoli address for him.
And one Western intelligence source said al Libi appears to have been in Libya in the spring of 2011, when the civil war was in full swing.
Family members told CNN al-Libi returned to Tripoli in 2011 to take part in the revolution against Gadhafi. His wife, four sons and daughter had arrived from Iran the previous year.
Al-Libi's sons and wife say they believed they were under surveillance over the past two years in Libya and expected anything -- even a drone strike. But Saturday's raid still came as a surprise.
"There was no longer any talk about him in the media, so we felt somewhat reassured. He even stopped taking his weapon or his sons with him or hiring private security -- he was living his life normally," Rahman said.
Counterterrorism analysts told CNN in fall 2012 that al Libi may not have been apprehended at the time because of the delicate security situation in much of Libya, where ex-jihadists -- especially those who once belonged to the Libyan Islamic Fighters Group -- held considerable sway after the campaign against and ultimate ouster of longtime leader Gadhafi.
It was not clear for how long, and how much, Libya's government knew about al Libi's presence, or whether other governments had approached them to arrest al Libi. The fact that there's no extradition treaty between Libya and the United States further complicates matters.
The fact that al Libi is in U.S. hands, of course, changes everything.
In addition to standing trial, al Libi will be questioned about what he knows about al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.
And if he talks, he could offer valuable information on men he worked with inside Libya, as well as al Qaeda generally.

"All his recent years of activation is going to come under very, very close and important scrutiny," said CNN's Robertson.

Quote: An accused operative for Al Qaeda seized by United States commandos in Libya over the weekend is being interrogated while in military custody on a Navy ship in the Mediterranean Sea, officials said on Sunday. He is expected eventually to be sent to New York for criminal prosecution.

A file photo of the Navy transport ship San Antonio, where Abu Anas was being questioned.


The fugitive, known as Abu Anas al-Libi, is seen as a potential intelligence gold mine, possessing perhaps two decades of information about Al Qaeda, from its early days under Osama bin Laden in Sudan to its more scattered elements today.
The decision to hold Abu Anas and question him for intelligence purposes without a lawyer present follows a pattern used successfully by the Obama administration with other terrorist suspects, most prominently in the case of Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame, a former military commander with the Somali terrorist group Shabab.
Mr. Warsame was captured in 2011 by the American military in the Gulf of Aden and interrogated aboard a Navy ship for about two months without being advised of his rights or provided a lawyer.
After a break of several days, Mr. Warsame was advised of his rights, waived them, was questioned for about a week by law enforcement agents and was then sent to Manhattan for prosecution.
"Warsame is the model for this guy," one American security official said.
Mr. Warsame later pleaded guilty and has been cooperating with the government, providing intelligence information about his co-conspirators, who included "high-level international terrorist operatives," federal prosecutors have said in court papers.
Abu Anas is being held aboard the U.S.S. San Antonio, a vessel brought in specifically for this mission, officials said.
Abu Anas, 49, who was born Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai, was indicted in Manhattan in 2000 on charges of conspiring with Bin Laden in plots to attack United States forces in Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Somalia, as well as in the 1998 bombings of the United States embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, which killed 224 people.
He has been described as a Qaeda computer expert and helped to conduct surveillance of the embassy in Nairobi, according to evidence in trials stemming from the bombings. In investigating the attacks, the authorities recovered a Qaeda terrorism manual in Abu Anas's residence in Manchester, England.
The manual is a detailed treatise on how to carry out terrorist missions. It focuses on forged documents, safe houses, surveillance, assassinations, codes and interrogation techniques. It also cites "blasting and destroying the embassies and attacking vital economic centers," and it endorses the use of explosives, saying they "strike the enemy with sheer terror and fright."
It is not known if Abu Anas wrote the manual, but federal prosecutors introduced it as evidence in the 2001 trial of four operatives convicted in the bombings conspiracy, and in the prosecution of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, the first former detainee at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to be tried in the federal system.
The manual was also used in a 2006 trial in Virginia over whether to impose the death penalty on Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker in the Sept. 11 plot. (He received a life sentence.)
The Defense Department, in a statement on Sunday, said Abu Anas was "currently lawfully detained under the law of war in a secure location outside of Libya."
"Wherever possible," the statement said, "our first priority is and always has been to apprehend terrorist suspects, and to preserve the opportunity to elicit valuable intelligence that can help us protect the American people."
Officials declined on Sunday to confirm that New York was Abu Anas's destination, but two officials suggested it was likely.
The seizure of Abu Anas was carried out by American troops assisted by F.B.I. and C.I.A. agents. Navy SEALs, meanwhile, carried out a raid on the Somali coast, trying without success to capture a senior leader of the Shabab, the group that carried out the massacre at the Nairobi shopping mall two weeks ago.
Another American official emphasized that the commando raids in Libya and Somalia were designed to capture the intended targets, not to kill them with Predator drone missiles, the signature counterterrorism weapon of the Obama administration.
"If we can, capturing terrorists provides valuable intelligence that we can't get if we kill them," said the official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the continuing interrogation.
Abu Anas is one of about two dozen defendants charged in federal court in Manhattan in a series of indictments that began in 1998, when Bin Laden was charged, and which expanded over the years to add other operatives.
With Abu Anas's capture, only a handful of those operatives are believed to remain alive and at large, most prominently Ayman al-Zawahiri, the deputy to Bin Laden who succeeded the Qaeda leader after he was killed in a 2011 American operation.
One of Bin Laden's former close aides, a Sudanese named Jamal Ahmed al-Fadl who defected from the group in the mid-1990s and became a cooperating witness for the American government, testified in 2001 that Abu Anas was a computer engineer who ran the group's computers.
Abu Anas was also part of a small team of Qaeda operatives that in the early 1990s traveled to Nairobi and carried out surveillance of the American Embassy and other potential bomb targets, according to the indictment and other evidence.
The photographs, diagrams and surveillance report from the Nairobi mission were ultimately reviewed by Bin Laden in Khartoum, Sudan, the government has said.
"Bin Laden looked at the picture of the American Embassy and pointed to where a truck could go as a suicide bomber," another member of the surveillance team, Ali A. Mohamed, said in federal court when he pleaded guilty to conspiracy in 2000.
News of Abu Anas's capture was welcomed by family members of victims.
"Of course, our hearts are still very much tied to that day," said Edith Bartley, whose father, Julian L. Bartley Sr., the consul general, and brother, Julian L. Bartley Jr., a college student working as an intern, were both killed in the attack in Nairobi.
Ms. Bartley said her mother, Sue, traveled regularly to New York from the Washington area for the Ghailani trial in 2010, and she said they would both attend any trial involving Abu Anas.
"It's a reminder to the courts and to others involved that the person who's on trial impacted real people, people who were serving their country abroad," she said.
<img src="http://meter-svc.nytimes.com/meter.gif">
Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/07/world/africa/a-terrorism-suspect-long-known-to-prosecutors.html?_r=0

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[TD="class: postHeader, bgcolor: transparent, colspan: 2"]Prison Ships, Ghost Prisoners, and Obama's Interrogation Program
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[TD="bgcolor: transparent"]By: Jeff Kaye Thursday July 7, 2011 1:52 pm[/TD]
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It was back in June 2008 that the British legal charity Reprieve issued a report alleging "the United States may have used as many as 17 ships as floating prisons." Moreover, the group claimed "about 26,000 people are being held by the U.S. in secret prisons a figure that includes land-based detention centers." The Defense Department, of course, denied anything untoward.

"We do not operate detention facilities on board Navy ships," said Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman. "Department of Defense detention facilities are in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay."

Of course, these were the bad, old days of the Bush/Cheney administration, and things were supposed to be different under the new Obama administration. But since Obama came into office, despite claims things would be different, and executive orders issued by the then-incoming President, evidence continues to grow that many of the old habits of torture and illegal detention remain part of the arsenal of the Obama Defense Department.
Egregious practices amounting to torture still remain in the Army Field Manual, and in particular its Appendix M. Reports have been made by major U.S. press about ongoing abuse or torture at the U.S. Bagram facility in Afghanistan. The administration continues to support a rendition program (with its paper-thin guarantee of "promises" by torturing nations that they won't torture). And of course, Guantanamo remains open.
Now, with the news about Somali prisoner Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame, we are hearing that at least this detainee (and it begs the question how many more like this), was held for two months as a ghost prisoner on a U.S. ship in international waters, uncharged, without access to attorneys or notification of the International Red Cross. In other words, he was held illegally. Now he's being charged in U.S. courts with terrorism.
It's not like the military has been completely hiding the fact they have been using naval ships to hold prisoners. As Adm. William H. McRaven told his Senate confirmation hearing last week (McRaven is to be the new head of Special Operations Forces) the U.S. will use ships to detain prisoners captured outside Afghanistan.
As the L.A. Times quoted him, "In many cases, we will put them on a naval vessel and we will hold them until we can either get a case to prosecute them in U.S. court,' send them to a third country or release them."
Back in 2008, Reprieve explained what their research had uncovered even back then. Reprieve legal director Clive Stafford Smith told Democracy Now's Amy Goodman:

And we've identified thirty-two prison ships, sort of prison hulks you used to read about in Victorian England, which have been converted to hold prisoners, and we've got pictures of them in Lisbon Harbor, for example. And these are holding prisoners around the world, as well. And there's a bunch of proxy prisons Morocco, Egypt and Jordan where this stuff is going on. And this is a huge concern, because the world focus is on Guantanamo Bay, which really is a diversionary tactic in the whole war of terror or war on terror, whatever you'd like to call it. And actually, most of these people who have been severed from their legal rights are in these other secret prisons around the world.

Today, Center for Constitutional Rights issued a press release condemning the use of ships as floating prisons, and the resulting violations of domestic and international law. The press release also asks a number of pertinent questions. In the reprint of this release, reproduced below, let the press corps take notice, and ask these questions of relevant governmental authorities, from the White House to the Pentagon to Congress.

While we join with those praising the Obama administration for charging Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame before a federal court rather than a flawed and lawless military tribunal, and rather than holding him indefinitely without charge, we condemn the administration for holding and interrogating Mr. Warsame incommunicado for more than two months on a U.S. naval ship. Under our domestic and international law, he should have been treated like a civilian criminal suspect and brought to the U.S. for trial immediately.
Moreover, according to The New York Times, the administration did not notify the International Committee of the Red Cross of Mr. Warsame's capture until approximately two months after his detention. This is illegal and inexcusable. It means in effect that Mr. Warsame was disappeared for this period with all the attendant dangers such hidden detention engenders. It is reminiscent of early Guantánamo Bay and CIA "black site" detention.
We also question under what authority Mr. Warsame was captured and detained. The administration must clarify whether it claims authorization to capture and detain him under the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force. Such authority only extends to those involved with the 9/11 attacks, and his relationship to those attacks seems remote or nonexistent. Rather, it appears that the administration is stretching the meaning of that law to capture and detain, perhaps indefinitely, anyone it claims is a terrorism suspect anywhere in the world. Such actions undercut the important criminal protections to which every suspect is entitled. Those protections kick in upon arrest and not two months after the fact.
Even accepting the administration's argument of laws of war, it is illegal under any circumstance to hold people at sea except pending transfer to land and not for purposes of interrogation outside the law. That provision was written into the Geneva Conventions and U.S. military regulations, most likely in response to Japanese abuses of American prisoners aboard Hell Ships' in World War II.
The administration must answer a host of questions surrounding this action:
First are questions regarding the legal authority for Mr. Warsame's capture and detention.
*** Under what legal theory and under what power was the administration operating to justify his capture and detention?
*** If the administration claims authority under the AUMF, how would that have justified the detention given that there is supposed to be an explicit tie to 9/11 in those cases?
*** Does the administration believe we are engaged in armed conflict in Somalia sufficient to trigger application of the laws of war? With the Shabab?
*** If Mr. Warsame was purportedly held in connection with an armed conflict, what does the administration claim his status was under the laws of war?
*** Does the administration claim that Congress has authorized armed conflict with the Shabab?
Second are questions concerning his treatment once captured.
*** Under what authority does the administration claim it may hold a person beyond fourteen days without notifying the Red Cross?
*** How long does the administration claim they may hold a person without procedural protections (e.g., access to counsel and being informed of the right to habeas corpus) before they are prosecuted?
*** How can Mr. Warsame's Miranda waiver have been genuinely voluntary if he was only read his rights two months into his incommunicado detention and interrogation, even after a supposed "break"?
*** Was Mr. Warsame allowed contact with his family?
*** Separate and apart from authority to detain, what authority did they have to interrogate him?
Third are questions regarding how widespread is the practice under which Mr. Warsame was held.
*** How many other people are floating around on U.S. prison ships?
*** How many of those are unknown to the Red Cross?
The proper way to handle Mr. Warsame was the way the U.S. handled other pirate cases in 2009 and 2010: suspects were brought to the U.S. to face criminal charges in New York and Virginia within days of capture at sea. The Obama administration appears to have created a floating legal black hole, just as Guantánamo Bay was originally conceived: no Red Cross, no lawyers, no habeas no rights.

If Congress had any backbone, and it doesn't, there would be immediate hearings on this. But the GOP of course isn't interested, and the Democratic Party is loathe to do anything that might bring the military or interrogation under review going into an election year, and also because, well, they share with the GOP a jonesing for "war on terror" activities. Witness their support for Obama's military adventure in Libya.

We more than ever need an independent political force in this country that will confront the unlawful actions of the military and intelligence agencies. But right now, the Empire is in the driver's seat, and all we can do is protest and demand that something be done.
​http://my.firedoglake.com/valtin/2011/07/07/prison-ships-ghost-prisoners-and-obamas-interrogation-program/