WASHINGTON — During al-Qaida’s early years in the 1990s, when Osama bin Laden ran the terrorist group out of Sudan, a young Libyan man who was part of his country’s besieged diaspora of Islamists used his advanced computer skills to rise to the top of the organization long before it emerged as a global menace.

After the Libyan uprising started in early 2011, Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai – known by his alias Anas al-Libi – who was detained by U.S. Special Operations forces over the weekend – was among the Islamists who flocked back home. He soon received an important assignment by al-Qaida leaders in Pakistan, according to a U.S. intelligence official: establish a new cell for the network in the strategic North African country, which was reeling from a brutal civil war.

“He was tasked to create a terrorist network in Libya and involved in strategic planning between al-Qaida and Libya,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an intelligence assessment. The official said the order was delivered within the last year, which might help explain why the Obama administration authorized the rare and risky rendition carried out by U.S. commandos Saturday.

TROVE OF INFORMATION

American officials have said the capture of al-Libi, could yield a trove of new information about the enigmatic operative, who was instrumental in the rise of al-Qaida and appeared to be playing a key role in its renaissance. There is relatively little public information about what he has been doing since he fled Britain in 1999.

Al-Libi, now 49, is being held somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea aboard the USS San Antonio, an amphibious transport dock. U.S. counterterrorism interrogators are hopeful he will offer new insight into the recent transformation of al-Qaida into a decentralized network that has managed to consolidate new footholds in North Africa.

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“My guess is that he will have a good deal to tell us about what has been going on in Libya and a significant amount of information to tell us about what al-Qaida has been up to between 2001 and the present,” said Daniel Benjamin, who recently stepped down as the State Department’s coordinator for counterterrorism and is now a foreign policy expert at Dartmouth College. “Possibly that will help us identify priorities and decide who else needs to be paid attention to.”

Al-Libi was among the Islamists drawn to Afghan battlefields in the 1980s to fight the Russian occupation. In the early 1990s, when bin Laden set out to plan a spectacular attack against U.S. embassies in Africa from his base in Sudan, the al-Qaida leader tasked al-Libi with scoping out targets. The group later carried out the bombings against the embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killing 224 people.

According to testimony provided in February 2001 by a former al-Qaida member who became a U.S. government witness in a federal case in New York, al-Libi took photos of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi and helped develop them in an apartment. Al-Libi, who has been indicted in a terrorism case in the Southern District of New York, also stands accused of gathering information on potential British and Israeli targets in the Kenyan capital.

INVALUABLE SKILLS

Besides being trained in surveillance, the computer engineer’s skills were deemed invaluable for an organization with growing transnational aspirations, said Ali Soufan, a former FBI agent who investigated the embassy bombings.

“He was definitely one of their smarter people,” Soufan said in an interview. “In the ‘80s and ‘90s, not a lot of people knew about computers.”

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By the time the embassies were bombed, on Aug. 7, 1998, al-Libi was long gone from Sudan. He was among scores of Islamists who had fled to Britain after being granted political asylum there. In 1999, Scotland Yard investigators questioned al-Libi at the urging of FBI agents investigating the embassy bombings, Soufan said.

BLUEPRINT FOR TERRORISM

Al-Libi vanished before investigators could gather enough evidence to detain him. The following year, agents searching his apartment found an al-Qaida guide issued to its fighters, which later became known as the “Manchester Manual.” The 180-page document was a blueprint of al-Qaida’s philosophy and included vast tactical guidance.

Terrorism experts said al-Libi’s next steps remain something of a mystery. Some have reported that he spent time in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran. Abdullah al-Ruqai, one of the detainee’s sons, told the New York Times on Sunday that the entire family was held in Iran for four years under harsh conditions.

After returning to Libya in 2011 to join the rebellion against dictator Moammar Gadhafi, al-Libi did not appear to keep a low profile, despite a $5 million bounty being offered by the U.S. government for information leading to his capture. A United Nations sanctions report listed an address for him in the Libyan capital.

An August 2012 report by the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress on al-Qaida’s presence in Libya said al-Libi was “most likely involved in al-Qaida strategic planning and coordination” between the network’s leaders in Pakistan and hard-line Libyan Islamist militias in Libya that held hard-line views. The report said there had been “intense communications” from al-Qaida leaders to al-Libi.

GROWING CONCERN

“He and others who found safe haven in the chaos that is now Libya are of great and growing concern to us,” said Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., a senior member of the House Intelligence Committee.


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