CORE' AL QAEDA MEMBER CAPTURED IN LIBYA.

• Position: Abu Anas al Libi

CORE' AL QAEDA MEMBER CAPTURED IN LIBYA

By Thomas Joscelyn, senior editor, Long War Journal

http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2013/10/core_al_qaeda_member.php

In this article the author sketches the recent career of al Qaeda leader Abu Anas al Libi, whose real name is Nazih Abdul Hamed al Ruqai, and the importance of his capture by a joint U. S. military and FBI team. His extensive dossier included most recently responsibility to build an al Qaeda network in Libya, create an Islamic state, and institute Sharia law.

Wanted by American authorities since the 1998 bombing of American embassies in Africa, for which he had acted as a surveillance agent, al Libi, had been living rather openly in Libya, being interviewed by Western media, and making little effort to conceal his ties to al Qaeda.

The author describes in some detail a number of official U.S. reports on his activities and his importance to the al Qaeda organization, describing him as a core member of Al Qaeda. Mr. Joscelyn goes on to describe al Qaeda as having a core leadership based in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but present elsewhere in the Islamic world. He paints a picture of leadership being somewhat decentralized and depending on the leadership of people like al Libi to implement very general guidance from the al Qaeda leader, Ayman al Zawahiri.

In building his organization, al Libi was to coordinate with groups affiliated with al Qaeda, stockpile arms, and launch operations using the Libyan rebellion to install an Islamist regime in Libya relying on returnees from other conflicts in Yemen, Afghanistan and Iraq...