One of the world’s most wanted
terrorists captured in Libya by elite US troops was given political
asylum in Britain but fled two years later when it was discovered he was
planning Jihad from his Manchester flat, it emerged today.
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, yet within a year he was living as a student in Moss Side.
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, 13 years after British police let him slip through their fingers.
It was revealed today that he had been arrested as a terror suspect in the UK in 1999.
But 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 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.
Today his capture 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.
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 US Defense Department said Liby was ‘lawfully detained under the law of war in a secure location outside of Libya’.
Liby
was indicted by the US for his alleged role in the 1998 bombings. A
court heard Osama bin Laden had ordered him to Kenya and Tanzania to
photograph the embassy compounds and decide how best to carry out the
attacks.
His family denied
he had any involvement. They said he was in the Armed Islamic Fighting
Group, a militant organisation that battled Colonel Gadaffi’s regime.
Home Secretary Theresa May is to be questioned by MPs over why Liby was given asylum in Britain.
Keith
Vaz, chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, said the case would
be raised with the Home Secretary when she appears before MPs.
Mr Vaz said: 'This case raises serious questions about the motives behind asylum and national security decisions in the UK.
'It
is not the first time that someone, who has been brought to the
attention of the authorities and released, has gone on to be linked to
further terrorist activity.
'I will be raising these concerns with the Home Secretary when she appears before the committee on the 15th October.'
The
US said the capture had taken place with authorisation from Libya. But a
statement from prime minister Ali Zeidan’s office said: ‘The Libyan
government is keen on prosecuting any Libyan citizen inside Libya, no
matter what the charges are... the accused are innocent until proven
guilty.’
Liby, who studied
electronic and nuclear engineering in Tripoli, is thought to have been
with bin Laden in Sudan in the early Nineties.
He then turned up in the UK in 1995 where he was granted political asylum as an enemy of Gaddafi.
Since fleeing Britain, he has cropped up in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and is said to have been jailed in Iran for seven years.
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.
Meanwhile,
Mrs May warned last night that British extremists were training as
terrorists in the Syrian civil war and could return to commit atrocities
at home.
The Home Secretary
also revealed that security had been tightened in the UK after the
attack at the Westgate mall in Kenya, adding: ‘We have increased... the
number of armed response vehicles, the number of specially-trained
firearm officers.’
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