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U.S. Forces Capture Qaeda Leader Linked to Embassy Bombings U.S. Raids in Libya and Somalia Strike Terror Targets
(about 2 hours later)
CAIRO — United States forces captured a leader of Al Qaeda indicted in the 1998 bombings of the United States embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, ending a 15-year manhunt by seizing him in broad daylight near the Libyan capital, American officials said. CAIRO — American commandos carried out raids on Saturday in two far-flung African countries in a powerful flex of military muscle aimed at capturing fugitive terrorist suspects. Members of a Navy SEAL team emerged before dawn from the Indian Ocean to attack a seaside villa in a Somali town known as a gathering point for militants, while American troops assisted by F.B.I. and C.I.A. agents seized a suspected leader of Al Qaeda on the streets of Tripoli, Libya.
The suspect, born Nazih Abd al Hamid al-Ruqhay and known by his nom de guerre, Abu Anas el-Liby, has been high on the list of the United States government’s most-wanted fugitives since at least 2000, when a New York court indicted him for his part in planning the embassy attacks. The F.B.I. had offered a bounty of up to $5 million for information leading to his capture. In Tripoli, American forces captured a Libyan militant who had been indicted in 2000 for his role in the 1998 bombings of the United States embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The militant, born Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai and known by his nom de guerre, Abu Anas el-Liby, had a $5 million bounty on his head and his capture in broad daylight ended a 15-year manhunt.
Abu Anas was captured alive near Tripoli in a joint operation by the United States military, the C.I.A. and the F.B.I., and was in American custody, a United States official said. The Somalia raid was planned more than a week ago, officials said, in response to a massacre by the militant Somali group Shabab at a Nairobi shopping mall. The Navy SEAL team targeted a senior Shabab leader in the town of Baraawe and exchanged gunfire with militants in a predawn firefight.
His capture was the latest grave blow to what remains of the original Qaeda organization after a 12-year-old American campaign to capture or kill its leadership, including the killing two years ago of its founder, Osama Bin Laden, in a compound in Pakistan. The unidentified Shabab leader is believed to have been killed in the firefight, but the SEAL team was forced to withdraw before that could be confirmed, a senior American security official said.
Abu Anas is not believed to have played any role in the 2012 attack on the United States diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, senior officials briefed on that investigation say, but he may have sought to build networks connecting what remains of the Qaeda organization to like-minded militants in his native Libya. Officials said the timing of the two raids was coincidental. But coming on the same day, they underscored the importance of counterterrorism operations in North Africa, where the breakdown of order in Libya since the ouster of the Qaddafi government in 2011 and the persistence of the Shabab in Somalia, which has lacked an effective central government for more than two decades, have helped spread violence and instability across the region.
Senior officials of the Libyan transitional government said they were unaware of the operation that captured him. Some vehemently insisted that their forces would play no role in any such American military operation on Libyan soil. The military may have pursued both targets simultaneously to avoid the possibility that news of one raid might spook into hiding the target of the other, or that a public backlash in one country might rattle the governments of the other into withdrawing its quiet cooperation. It was unclear if Washington was planning other raids as well.
But a senior American official said the Libyan government was involved in the operation. But at a moment when President Obama’s popularity is flagging under the weight of his standoff with Congressional Republicans and his leadership criticized for his reversal in Syria, the simultaneous attacks are bound to fuel accusations that the administration was eager for a showy victory.
Disclosure of the raid is likely to inflame anxieties among many Libyans about their national sovereignty, putting a new strain on the transitional government’s fragile authority. Many Libyans already suspect that their interim prime minister, Ali Zeidan, who previously lived in Geneva as part of the exile opposition to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, of collaborating too closely with the West. Abu Anas, the Libyan Qaeda leader, was the bigger prize, and officials said Saturday night that he was alive in United States custody. While the details about his capture were sketchy, an American official said Saturday night that he appeared to have been taken peacefully and that “he is no longer in Libya.”
Abu Anas, 49, was born in Tripoli and is believed to have joined Bin Laden’s organization as early as the early 1990s, when it was based in Sudan. He later moved to Britain, where he had been granted political asylum. United States prosecutors in New York charged him in a 2000 indictment with helping to conduct “visual and photographic surveillance” of the United States Embassy in Nairobi in 1993 and again in 1995. In the indictment, prosecutors said Abu Anas had discussed with another senior Qaeda figure the idea of attacking an American target in retaliation for the United States peacekeeping operation in Somalia. His capture was the latest grave blow to what remains of original Qaeda organization after a 12-year-old American campaign to capture or kills its leadership, including the killing two years ago of its founder, Osama bin Laden, in Pakistan.
After the 1998 bombing, the British police raided his apartment and found an 18-chapter terrorist training manual in Arabic. Titled “Military Studies in the Jihad Against the Tyrants,” it included advice on car bombing, torture, sabotage and disguise. Abu Anas is not believed to have played any role in the 2012 attack on the United States diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, senior officials briefed on that investigation have said, but he may have sought to build networks connecting what remains of the Qaeda organization to like-minded militants in his native Libya.
An American official said Abu Anas was to be brought to the United States for trial. A senior American official said the Libyan government was involved in the operation, but it was unclear in what capacity. An assistant to the prime minister of the Libyan transitional government said the government was unaware of any operation or Abu Anas’s abduction. Asked if American forces ever conduct raids inside Libya or collaborate with Libyan forces, Mehmoud Abu Bahia, assistant to defense minister, replied, “Absolutely not.”
Since the overthrow of Colonel Qaddafi in 2011, Tripoli has slid steadily into lawlessness, with no strong central government or police presence. It has become a haven for militants seeking to avoid detection elsewhere, and United States government officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential information, have acknowledged in recent months that Abu Anas and other internationally wanted terrorists had been seen moving freely around the capital. Disclosure of the raid is likely to inflame anxieties among many Libyans about their national sovereignty, putting a new strain on the transitional government’s fragile authority. Many Libyans already accuse their current interim prime Minister, Ali Zeidan, who previously lived in Geneva as part of the exiled opposition to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, of collaborating too closely with the West.
His seizure was first reported Saturday in a Twitter post by a Libyan-born counterterrorism analyst based in London, Noman Benotman. Abu Anas, 49, was born in Tripoli and joined Bin Laden’s organization as early as the early 1990s, when it was based in Sudan. He later moved to Britain, where he was granted political asylum as Libyan dissident. United States prosecutors in New York charged him in a 2000 indictment with helping to conduct “visual and photographic surveillance” of the United States Embassy in Nairobi in 1993 and again in 1995. Prosecutors said in the indictment that Abu Anas had discussed with another senior Qaeda figure the idea of attacking an American target in retaliation for the United States peacekeeping operation in Somalia.
His capture coincided with a fierce gunfight that killed 15 Libyan soldiers at a checkpoint in a neighborhood southeast of Tripoli, near the homeland of Abu Anas’s clan. After the 1998 bombing, the British police raided his apartment and found an 18-chapter terrorist training manual. Written in Arabic and entitled “Military Studies in the jihad Against the Tyrants,” it included advice on car bombing, torture, sabotage and disguise.
A spokesman for the Libyan Army general staff, Col. Ali Sheikhi, said five cars full of armed men in masks pulled up at the army checkpoint at 6:15 a.m. and opened fire at point-blank range. Gunmen also fired from other positions farther away in a coordinated attack, he said, and four soldiers were wounded but survived the attack. Since the overthrow of Colonel Qaddafi, Tripoli has slid steadily into lawlessness, with no strong central government or police presence. It has become a safe haven for militants seeking to avoid detection elsewhere, and United States government officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential information, have acknowledged in recent months that Abu Anas and other wanted terrorists had been seen moving freely around the capital.
It was not clear if the assault at the checkpoint was related to the capture of Abu Anas. The operation to capture Abu Anas was several weeks in the making, a United States official said, and President Obama was regularly briefed as the suspect was tracked in Tripoli. While Mr. Obama had to personally approve the capture, the operation, while conducted in great secrecy, did not have the intensity about it that surrounded the hunt and killing of Osama bin Laden.
The United States has sharply reduced its diplomatic presence in Libya since the attack that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens in Benghazi on Sept 11, 2012. But it maintains a robust effort there trying to study and track those suspected of terrorism. But Mr. Obama had often promised there would be “no boots on the ground” in Libya when the United States intervened there in March 2011, so the decision to send in Special Operations Forces was a risky one.

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from San Francisco, Michael S. Schmidt from Washington, and Suliman Ali Zway from Tripoli, Libya.

American officials say they will want to question Abu Anas for several weeks. But they did not dispute that, with an indictment pending against him in New York, that was most likely his ultimate destination. President Obama has been loathe to add to the prisoner count at the American military facility at Guantánamo Bay, and there is precedent for delivering suspected terrorists to New York if they are under indictment there.
The operation is unlikely to quell the continuing questions about the events in Benghazi 13 months ago that led to the deaths of four Americans. But officials say it was a product of the decision, after Benghazi, to bolster the counterterrorism effort in Libya, especially as Tripoli became a safe haven for al Qaeda leadership. Abu Abas was one of the most senior al Qaeda officials captured in recent years.
His capture coincided with a fierce gunfight that killed 15 Libyan soldiers at a checkpoint in a neighborhood southeast of Tripoli, near the traditional home of Abu Anas’s clan.
A spokesman for the Libyan Army general staff, Col. Ali Sheikhi, said five cars full of armed men in masks pulled up at the army checkpoint at 6:15 a.m. and opened fire at point-blank range. It was not clear if the assault at the checkpoint was related to the capture of Abu Anas.
The raid in Somalia that targeted a leader of the Shabab was the most significant raid by American troops in that lawless country since commandos killed Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, a Qaeda mastermind, near the same town four years ago.
The town, Baraawe, a small port south of Mogadishu, is known as a gathering place for the Shabab’s foreign fighters.
The military assault was “prompted by” the attack on the Westgate mall in Nairobi two weeks ago, a senior government official said. More than 60 people were killed when the Shabab militants overran the mall.
Witnesses in Baraawe described a firefight lasting over an hour, with helicopters called in for air support. A senior Somali government official who spoke on the condition of anonymity confirmed the raid, saying, “The attack was carried out by the American forces and the Somali government was pre-informed about the attack.”
A spokesman for the Shabab said that one of its fighters had been killed in an exchange of gunfire but that the group had beaten back the assault. American officials initially reported that they had seized the Shabab leader, but later backed off that account.
The F.B.I. had sent dozens of agents to Nairobi after the shopping mall siege to help Kenyan authorities with the investigation. United States officials fear that the Shabab could attempt a similar attack on American soil, perhaps employing Somali-American recruits.
A witness in Baraawe said the house was known as a place where senior foreign commanders stayed. He could not say whether they were there at the time of the attack, but he said that 12 well-trained Shabab fighters scheduled for a mission abroad were staying there at the time of the assault.One United States official said it was still unclear whether any Americans were involved in the Westgate siege, though many Kenyan officials said they now believed that there were only four attackers — far fewer than the 10 to 15 the government had previously reported.
A spokesman for the Kenyan military said Saturday that it had identified four of the attackers from surveillance footage as Abu Baara al-Sudani, Omar Nabhan, Khattab al-Kene and a man known only as Umayr.
The spokesman, Maj. Emmanuel Chirchir, said none of the militants had escaped the mall. “They’re all dead,” he said.
The footage, broadcast on Kenyan television on Friday night, showed four of the attackers moving about the mall with cool nonchalance.
At least one of the four men, Mr. Nabhan, is Kenyan, and believed to be related to Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, a Qaeda operative killed four years ago near Baraawe, the site of Saturday’s raid.
The elder Mr. Nabhan was a suspect in the bombing of an Israeli hotel on the Kenyan coast in 2002 and the attacks on the American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.
Matt Bryden, the former head of the United Nations Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea, said the tactics used in the Westgate attack were similar to those used by the Shabab in a number of operations in Somalia this year. But he also said that local help was needed to pull off an attack on that scale, and that several of the men identified as taking part in the attack were connected to group’s Kenyan affiliate, known as Al Hijra.
“We should certainly expect Al Hijra and Al Shabab to try again,” Mr. Bryden said. “And we should expect them to have the capacity to do so.”

David D. Kirkpatrick reported from Cairo; Nicholas Kulish from Nairobi, Kenya; and Eric Schmitt from San Francisco. Reporting was contributed by Suliman Ali Zway and Carlotta Gall from Tripoli, Libya; Michael S. Schmidt and David E. Sanger from Washington; Josh Kron from Mombasa, Kenya; and Mohammed Ibrahim from Mogadishu, Somalia.