It probably will be considered highly suspicious that Abu Anas al-Liby died just nine days before he was set to stand trial for his role in the 1998 African Embassy bombings. Abducted in Libya in 2013, al-Liby is alleged to have died from liver cancer at the age of fifty. His wife isn’t buying it.
His wife, Um Abdullah, accused the US government on Saturday of “kidnapping, mistreating and killing an innocent man,” according to the Associated Press news agency.
We can say for certain that he was kidnapped, or whatever you want to call it when someone is snatched from a foreign country and detained without the consent of the government there.
When he was seized in 2013, Mr Liby had been on the FBI’s most wanted list for more than a decade, with a $5m (£3.1m) bounty on his head. He had been indicted by a New York grand jury in 2000.
US Secretary of State John Kerry was forced to defend the capture after Libya called on the US to explain the raid on its territory.
Many people in Libya were angry about what they said was a breach of the country’s sovereignty.
Mr Liby was detained by US commandos on 5 October 2013 and interrogated on board a US warship before being handed over to FBI agents.
In the interminable War on Terror, I don’t think there is a single individual who has had more misinformation spread about him than al-Libi, who has been “captured” more times than al Qaeda Number Threes have been killed.
I don’t say this as a cynic. The record is clear.
Actually, it is as clear as mud. And the circumstances of his death place a nice capstone on a life that was obviously much more myth than reality.
He may, however, have had a career working with MI6. At least for a time.
A year later [1996] MI6 is said to have paid a Libyan Al Qaeda cell to kill Colonel Gaddafi. It is thought that Liby, 49, pictured, was allowed to stay in return for aiding the alleged plot, which was unsuccessful.
A trial would have been, shall we say, interesting.