Abu Anas al-Libi (30 March 1964 – 2 January 2015), born Nazih Abul-Hamed Nabih al-Ruqai'i, was a member of al-Qaeda from Libya who surveilled the city of Nairobi, Kenya in preparation for the 1998 bombings.
Biography[]
Abu Anas al-Libi was born on 30 March 1964 and was tied with al-Qaeda since 1994, when they had their roots in Sudan. In 1995 he failed to assassinate President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and gained political asylum in the United Kingdom, and he was allowed to stay for an attempt to kill Colonel Muammar Gaddafi of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya in 1996. In 1998, as a computer specialist, he was used by Osama Bin Laden to scout out locations in the Kenyan city of Nairobi for bombs to go off. His role in the 1998 embassy bombings led to his interrogation by Scotland Yard in 1999, although he erased his hard drive on his computer, leaving the British with no intelligence on him.
In 2002, al-Libi escaped capture in Afghanistan, although initial reports said that he was held in a jail in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum. He was instead imprisoned in Iran, and he returned to his home country of Libya in 2012 after a decade in Libyan captivity. On 5 October 2013, Libi was captured in Tripoli by the United States' Delta Force and was taken to USS San Antonio, and on 3 November 2014 he was tried alongside Khalid al-Fawwaz. However, he died of the Hepatitis C liver disease at the age of 50 in a hospital in New York City before he could be prosecuted.