By Libya Herald reporters.
Tripoli, 3 January 2015:
Nazih Al-Ruqaii, alias Abu Anas Al-Libi has died just a week before he was due . . .[restrict]to be tried in a New York court on charges that he was involved in the 1998 double bombing of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 224 people, including 12 Americans.
In October 2013 Libi, a computer expert, was snatched, apparently by US special forces, from outside his Tripoli home in Nufleen. He had just returned from morning prayers at his local mosque. There had been a $5 million bounty on his head. Some argued that Libi had in fact been seized by Libyans and handed over to the Americans.
He was taken to the United States, where he pleaded not guilty to any role in the embassy bombings.
According to his lawyer Bernard Kleinman, quoted by the Washington Post, Libi had died in hospital in New York, from advanced liver cancer for which he had undergone surgery three weeks ago. In October Libi had told the court that when he made self-incriminating statements to FBI investigators, he had been weak and on hunger strike.
Libi’s defence was that though he had indeed once been a member of Al-Qaeda, he had severed his links with the terror organisation before the East African embassy assaults.
He had reportedly been in a coma before he died and family members contradicted his lawyer by insisting that he had been moved back to prison prematurely.
His widow Um Abdulrahaman, who reportedly asked the Associated Press to called her “Um Abdullah”, said that Libi’s imprisonment had worsened his illness. “ I accuse the American government of kidnapping, mistreating and killing an innocent man” she said, “He did nothing”. [/restrict]
