Tag: Anas al-Libi

20 December 2000

Posted on by William Arkin

 

A grand jury in the Southern District of New York (SDNY) returns an indictment against five additional suspects in the case of the United States v. Usama bin Laden, et al. The five suspects—Saif Al-Adel, Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah (Abu Muhammad al-Masri), Muhsin Musa Matwalli Atwah, Ahmed Mohamed Hamed Ali, and Anas Al-Libi—are charged in the overall conspiracy, led by al Qaeda, to kill U.S. nationals and engage in other illegal acts.

In addition, Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah is charged for his role as the mastermind of the August 7, 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah was gunned down on the streets of Tehran in August 2020.

Muhsin Musa Matwalli Atwah was killed in an airstrike or drone strike in October 2006.

Ahmed Mohamed Hamed Ali was killed in a drone strike in 2010.

Anas al-Libi was captured by operators of the Joint Special Operations Command in Libya on October 5, 2013. Ten days later, he appeared in Manhattan federal court and pled not guilty to terrorism charges. His trial was scheduled for January 2015, but he died just before it began in a New York hospital.

Saif al-Adel, if alive, is still at large 20 years later.

18 September 2000

Posted on by William Arkin

 

USA Today reports that U.S. intelligence has obtained CD-ROM copies of a six-volume al Qaeda manual, believed to be used to train recruits in Afghanistan and elsewhere. The manual’s 18 chapters contain instructions on everything from basic religious indoctrination, al Qaeda membership criteria, communications and operational tradecraft, security, means of assassination, and evasion of capture and interrogation.

The manual was obtained in a search of the Manchester, U.K. home of Anas al-Libi. Al-Libi, whose real name was Nazih Abdul-Hamed Nabih al-Ruqai’i, was a Libyan indicted in the U.S. for his part in the 1998 African embassy bombings. (He died in January 2015.)

The al Qaeda manual was translated into English by the FBI and was subsequently introduced into evidence as part of the spring 2001 African embassy bombing trials in New York.