Abu Anas al-Libi and the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG)

[Magda Hassan]

::laughingdog::

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.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/10359319/Abu-Anas-al-Libi-al-Qaeda-kingpin-caught-in-Libya-was-released-by-British-police-before-going-on-the-run.html