Al-Qaeda Commander Moved Freely in Pakistan Libyan Killed Last Week Operated Openly
By Imtiaz Ali and Craig Whitlock Washington Post Foreign Service Monday, February 4, 2008; A01 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/03/AR2008020303 147_pf.html PESHAWAR, Pakistan <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/countries/pakistan.html?nav=el> , Feb. 3 -- A Libyan al-Qaeda commander who was killed last week in northwestern Pakistan <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Pakistan?tid=informline> had lived there for years and, despite a $200,000 U.S. bounty on his head, felt secure enough to meet officials and visit hospitals, according to officials and residents of this city. As he organized suicide bombings and other attacks in neighboring Afghanistan <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/countries/afghanistan.html?nav=e l> , Abu Laith al-Libi <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Abu+Laith+al-Libi?tid=infor mline> found a comfortable refuge in Pakistan's border region, the sources said in interviews. He met openly with a Pakistani politician and a Libyan diplomat and called on foreign fighters recovering from their wounds. The Pakistani government contends it has been doing everything possible to capture al-Qaeda <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Al+Qaeda?tid=informline> figures within its borders. But Libi, who was killed in a missile attack last week, moved unchallenged around the heart of Peshawar <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Peshawar?tid=informline> , a city of about 1.2 million people, underscoring how freely he and other al-Qaeda leaders have been able to operate in Pakistan. One day in 2006, Libi strode into the central prison in Peshawar, the administrative capital of North-West Frontier Province <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/North-West+Frontier+Provinc e?tid=informline> . As another Libyan fighter sat nearby behind bars -- in the custody of Pakistani authorities -- Libi, the politician and the Libyan diplomat argued over whether the man should be deported against his wishes to Libya <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Libya?tid=informline> or released to fight another day, according to Javed Ibrahim Paracha, the politician who helped arrange the meeting. "I knew Abu Laith for quite some time," said Paracha, a former member of the Pakistan National Assembly <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/National+Assembly+of+Pakist an?tid=informline> who is running for a parliamentary seat again in elections this month. Paracha called Laith "a good and pious Muslim" and said the Libyan had frequently visited hospitals in Peshawar and the nearby city of Bannu to check on foreign fighters who had been wounded fighting alongside the Taliban <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/The+Taliban?tid=informline> and other militant groups. A Pakistani prison official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed some details of Paracha's account of the gathering and said it occurred at least 18 months ago. The lack of progress in hunting al-Qaeda commanders such as Libi has fueled frustration among U.S., Afghan and European officials, who say al-Qaeda and its Taliban allies regularly plan operations abroad from havens in Pakistan. The Pakistani government has barred U.S. forces from searching for al-Qaeda leaders on its soil. It has been nearly two years since Pakistani forces are known to have killed or captured any significant al-Qaeda figures. The last was Muhsin Musa Matwalli Atwah, an Egyptian citizen who had been indicted in the United States in connection with the bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/East+Africa?tid=informline> in 1998. Atwah had been on the FBI <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Federal+Bureau+of+Investiga tion?tid=informline> 's list of most-wanted terrorism suspects, although intelligence analysts did not consider him part of the network's core leadership. He was killed in April 2006 in a Pakistani airstrike in North Waziristan <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/North+Waziristan?tid=inform line> . Libi's activities in Pakistan had been a particularly sore point between the United States and the government of President Pervez Musharraf <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Pervez+Musharraf?tid=inform line> . A few months after Libi visited the Peshawar jail, U.S. military <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/U.S.+Armed+Forces?tid=infor mline> officers said, Libi organized a suicide attack outside Bagram air base in Afghanistan during a visit by Vice President Cheney <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Dick+Cheney?tid=informline> . At least 23 people were killed in the February 2007 bombing. Some security officials and analysts said Libi also orchestrated a 2005 prison breakout of four al-Qaeda fighters from the U.S. military's prison at Bagram. Libi emerged as a major figure among Islamic extremists in 2002, when he announced via videotape that al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Osama+bin+Laden?tid=informl ine> and Taliban leader Mohammad Omar had survived the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan. Libi's death was reported Thursday in a statement released on an al-Qaeda Web site. Although the statement did not give details, he is thought to have been among 12 people killed in a missile strike Tuesday in a village in North Waziristan. Intelligence reports indicate that Libi had been on his way to a meeting with Baitullah Mehsud, a Pakistani Taliban commander and tribal leader who has been blamed in the Dec. 27 assassination of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Benazir+Bhutto?tid=informli ne> , according to an intelligence official in Europe <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Europe?tid=informline> who spoke on condition of anonymity. The identities of the other people killed in the missile strike are unknown. Pakistani officials said they have had difficulty gaining access to the scene, but residents have said local Taliban commanders pulled the bodies out of the rubble. Neither U.S. nor Pakistani officials have publicly asserted responsibility for the attack. Libi's death came two months after he and al-Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Ayman+al-Zawahiri?tid=infor mline> announced in a joint statement that a Libyan militant network had formally joined forces with al-Qaeda. Libi was a longtime leader in the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, an organization founded in the early 1990s to topple Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Moammar+Gadhafi?tid=informl ine> . The Libyan government had been trying to persuade members of the group to agree to a truce, which was partly why Libi had agreed to meet at the Peshawar prison with a diplomat from the Libyan Embassy in Islamabad <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Islamabad?tid=informline> , said Paracha, the Pakistani politician who arranged the meeting. Paracha said the encounter led to further "interactions" between Libi and the Libyan government, though he declined to give details. At the time, he said, Libi was an independent operator who had not formally pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda, but worked closely with the network and Taliban forces to fight U.S. and NATO <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/NATO?tid=informline> troops in Afghanistan. "He was not directly involved with al-Qaeda but would join the bin Laden forces on a needed basis," Paracha said. "He was leading his own group of Libyan militants." Paracha is a regional leader in the branch of the Pakistan Muslim League party that is headed by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Nawaz+Sharif?tid=informline > . Paracha is known to have close contacts with Taliban leaders and other militants. He said he has negotiated the release of hundreds of foreign fighters from Pakistani prisons on the condition that they leave the country. "I've been doing this service for four years," he said. Paracha's efforts to mediate a peace deal between Libi and the Libyan government went nowhere, however, according to a Libyan source familiar with the talks. "Abu Laith was 100 percent against the negotiations between the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and the government," said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "He refused to be part of it." Whitlock reported from Berlin. (F)AIR USE NOTICE: All original content and/or articles and graphics in this message are copyrighted, unless specifically noted otherwise. All rights to these copyrighted items are reserved. Articles and graphics have been placed within for educational and discussion purposes only, in compliance with "Fair Use" criteria established in Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976. The principle of "Fair Use" was established as law by Section 107 of The Copyright Act of 1976. "Fair Use" legally eliminates the need to obtain permission or pay royalties for the use of previously copyrighted materials if the purposes of display include "criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research." Section 107 establishes four criteria for determining whether the use of a work in any particular case qualifies as a "fair use". A work used does not necessarily have to satisfy all four criteria to qualify as an instance of "fair use". Rather, "fair use" is determined by the overall extent to which the cited work does or does not substantially satisfy the criteria in their totality. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml THIS DOCUMENT MAY CONTAIN COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL. COPYING AND DISSEMINATION IS PROHIBITED WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE COPYRIGHT OWNERS. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: [email protected] Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. OSINT, as a part of The Intelligence Network, is making it available without profit to OSINT YahooGroups members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their activities, methods, techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and other intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
