Al Qaeda Commander Captured In Libya

Abu Anas al-Liby, one of the world’s most wanted terrorists has been captured in Libya by elite US troops 13 years after British police let him slip through their fingers.

Al Qaeda commander Abu Anas al-Liby was wanted for plotting the 1998 US embassy attacks in Kenya and Tanzania that killed more than 220.
 

The extremist, who had a £3million US bounty on his head, was seized at his home in Tripoli after dawn prayers by the US Army’s Delta Force.
 

But the raid was described as ‘a kidnapping’ by Libya, which has demanded an explanation from Washington.

Liby, whose real name is Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai, has been on the FBI’s most-wanted list since it was introduced soon after the 9/11 attacks in 2001.

However, two years earlier, he had been arrested as a terror suspect in the UK, where he had claimed political asylum.
 

The computer expert was released because he had cleared his hard drive and Scotland Yard detectives could find no evidence to hold him.
 

Then in May 2000, anti-terror police raided his flat in Moss Side, Manchester, where he was living as a student, and found a 180-page handwritten terror instruction book for Al Qaeda followers which was called the ‘Manchester Manual’.
 

It explained how to booby-trap cars and TVs and showed how to kill using a knife. But by the time police entered the property Liby had fled the country.

US Secretary of State John Kerry said the operation to snatch him on Saturday showed that terrorists could ‘run but they cannot hide’.
 

Liby’s brother Nabih said the terror chief was parking outside his house when three vehicles surrounded him, his car’s window was smashed and his gun seized before he was taken away.


The news of his capture comes as it emerged that US Navy Seal commandos had to abort a mission to seize a leader of al-Shabaab, the group behind the Westgate shopping centre massacre in Nairobi.
 

After their dawn attack at the house of al-Shabaab leader Ahmed Abdi Godane near Barawe in southern Somalia met fierce resistance, they abandoned the raid.
 

Seven militants are said to have been killed, with no US casualties.