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Qaeda Suspect Facing Trial in New York Dies in Custody Qaeda Suspect Facing Trial in New York Over Africa Embassy Bombings Dies
(about 5 hours later)
HONOLULU — A suspected leader of Al Qaeda who was to go on trial in New York this month in the 1998 bombings of two American Embassies in East Africa died in government custody on Friday night after complications from longstanding medical problems, federal prosecutors said. A suspected operative for Al Qaeda who was captured by United States commandos in Libya in 2013 and brought to New York to face trial died in government custody on Friday night after complications from longstanding medical problems, prosecutors said.
The man, Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai, also known as Abu Anas al-Libi, had liver cancer. On Wednesday, he was taken to a hospital in New York from the Metropolitan Correctional Center, where he had been held since shortly after American commandos captured him in Libya in October 2013. The man, Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai, 50, who had liver cancer, was taken to a hospital on Wednesday from the Metropolitan Correctional Center, where he was being held pending a trial that was to begin in Manhattan a week from Monday.
“We write now to inform the court that despite the care provided at the hospital, his condition deteriorated rapidly,” the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara, said in a letter to the judge overseeing the case. “We write now to inform the court that despite the care provided at the hospital, his condition deteriorated rapidly,” the office of Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a letter filed early Saturday morning to the judge overseeing the case.
Mr. Bharara said that federal marshals had been in regular contact with Mr. Ruqai’s lawyer, who he said was with Mr. Ruqai throughout the day Friday, as was an imam. Mr. Ruqai’s lawyer, Bernard V. Kleinman, said in an interview that in a bedside meeting at the hospital on Wednesday, his client was lucid and gave him his health care proxy, in case he was unable to communicate his wishes if his condition worsened. “He recognized the seriousness of his condition,” Mr. Kleinman said, adding that his client wanted “extraordinary measures taken” — and they were, he said.
Mr. Ruqai, 50, had a $5 million bounty on his head until his capture in Tripoli, the Libyan capital, ended a 15-year manhunt. He was taken peacefully into custody and interrogated before being moved to New York to stand trial. Over the next two days, Mr. Ruqai was placed on a ventilator and had his blood pressure medication increased to a maximum dosage, Mr. Kleinman said.
According to an indictment filed in 2000 by prosecutors in New York, Mr. Ruqai helped conduct “visual and photographic surveillance” of the United States Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1993 and again in 1995. The August 1998 bombing of that embassy killed more than 200 people, including 12 Americans. Ten Tanzanians died in the attack on the embassy in their country on the same morning. Mr. Kleinman said that he spent almost the entire day Friday with his client, who was given C.P.R. when his heart ultimately failed in an unsuccessful effort to revive him. He said representatives of the Libyan Embassy were present, as was an imam, who, after Mr. Ruqai died, turned his body in a northeast direction, to face Mecca.
The authorities said that Mr. Ruqai had spoken with other Qaeda leaders about attacking American targets in retaliation for the United States peacekeeping operation in Somalia. Mr. Ruqai had faced trial on charges of conspiring with Osama bin Laden in Al Qaeda’s nearly simultaneous 1998 bombings of two United States embassies in East Africa, which killed 224 people, as well as in plots to attack United States forces in Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Somalia.
Mr. Ruqai, who was born in Tripoli, joined Al Qaeda in the early 1990s, when it was based in Sudan and led by Osama bin Laden. Several years later, he moved to Britain, claiming political asylum as a Libyan dissident. But he was perhaps best known for the extraordinary piece of evidence — a terrorism manual — that was found at his residence in Manchester, England, by the authorities investigating the embassy attacks. The manual, a detailed treatise of how to carry out terrorist missions and what to do if caught — has been introduced by prosecutors against terrorist defendants in trial after trial.
It is not clear how he ended up in Libya in 2013. But after the fall of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s government in 2011, Libya became a haven for militants, who could move easily throughout the country. Although Mr. Ruqai was thought to have been in Libya on Sept. 11, 2012, when militants attacked two American outposts in Benghazi — killing the United States ambassador, J. Christopher Stevens, and three other people — he was not believed to have played a role in those attacks. Mr. Ruqai, who had remained a fugitive from the authorities far longer than many of his co-defendants in the 1998 attacks, was considered a potential intelligence gold mine because he was believed to possess knowledge of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda dating from its early days in Sudan in the 1990s through its more scattered elements today.
Coming two years after Bin Laden was killed by American commandos in Pakistan, the capture of Mr. Ruqai was the latest blow to the remnants of Al Qaeda, whose leadership has been largely decimated. Just last month, prosecutors asked the judge in Mr. Ruqai’s case to allow them to introduce at trial letters Mr. Ruqai had sent directly to Bin Laden in 2010 after he was released from prison in Iran, where Mr. Ruqai was held for eight years.
“You may know the place you hold in my heart, and so I ask Allah to bring us together,” Mr. Ruqai told Bin Laden in one letter, dated Oct. 13, 2010.
In another letter, a top deputy to Bin Laden writes to the Qaeda leader, recommending Mr. Ruqai for a position of responsibility within the terrorist organization.
The government said the letters showed that as recently as 2010, Mr. Ruqai had “both the means and the motivation” to communicate directly with Bin Laden, and the materials were “powerful direct proof” of Mr. Ruqai’s “knowing and intentional participation” in Al Qaeda’s conspiracies to kill Americans. The judge, Lewis A. Kaplan of Federal District Court, had scheduled a hearing for Tuesday.
Mr. Ruqai had been described as a computer expert for Al Qaeda. And according to an indictment filed in 2000 by prosecutors in New York and evidenced at trials, he helped conduct surveillance of the United States Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, before the attack there.
It is not known whether Mr. Ruqai was the author of the terrorism manual, which discusses surveillance, codes, assassinations and interrogation techniques, and talks about “blasting and destroying the embassies and attacking vital economic centers.”
A co-defendant of Mr. Ruqai, Khaled al-Fawwaz, who was also charged in the bombings conspiracy and has pleaded not guilty, is still scheduled for trial on Jan. 12.
A family member of Mr. Ruqai could not be reached for comment on Saturday. But Mr. Ruqai’s son, Abdel Mouin, told CNN from Tripoli that the family holds the United States government “fully responsible” for what happened to Mr. Ruqai.
Mr. Kleinman praised his client’s treatment at the hospital where he had been taken, saying he was “thoroughly impressed with the professionalism of the staff,” and that they had done “an excellent job.”
But he expressed concern about how the government had handled his client’s medical care, an issue he raised in court at least as early as last summer, when he told the judge that his client was “terminally ill.”.
“My concern is with the Bureau of Prisons and the U.S. attorney’s office, which continually resisted my efforts to have my client placed in the appropriate medical treatment centers,” Mr. Kleinman said. Mr. Bharara’s office declined to comment; a federal prisons spokesman did not immediately return a message seeking comment.
Coming two years after Bin Laden was killed, the capture of Mr. Ruqai was the latest blow to Al Qaeda, whose leadership has been largely decimated.