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

[Magda Hassan]

He is currently being held in custody on a naval ship.

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.
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Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/07/world/....html?_r=0

More on the use of ships as prisons

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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...n-program/