The United-States abduct one of their ex-agents in Libya

President Obama gave the order to abduct Abu Anas al-Libi (whose real name is Nazih Abd al-Hamid al-Ruqhay), on October 6th 2013 in Libya. A Delta Force force succeeded without making any victims.

Even supposing that al-Libi were a legitimate target for the US, as claimed by Secretary of State John Kerry, this kidnapping constitutes a violation of international law and of Libyan sovereignty.

In 1995, this jihadist, who had joined Osama Bin Laden in the Sudan, participated in a failed attempt to assassinate Egyptian president Hosni Mubarack. He then found refuge in Doha (Qatar).

In 1996, the British secret services (MI5 and MI6) financed an Al-Qaïda cell to assassinate Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi [1]. Anas Al-Libi brokered the deal thereby receiving political asylum in the UK. He lived in Manchester until 2000 when he was charged by the US.

That same year, he was accused by the New York Southern District Court of having undertaken in 1993 the photographic reconnoitering that supposedly enabled, five years later, the 7 August 1988 attacks on the US embassies of Daar es-Salam and Nairobi, killing 12 Americans (and incidentally 214 other persons, in a total number of 5 000 non-American injured). When the "FBI’s Most Wanted Suspects" list was created in 2001, a 5 million dollar reward was offered for his capture.

Various sources maintain that he was detained in Iran from 2003 to 2012, upon which he returned to Libya. However, on the 6th of June 2007, Amnesty International claimed that he was actually held in a secret CIA prison [2].

In December 2010, the Libyan representative at the UN indicated that Al-Libi and his family had returned to their country, as part of a peace treaty negotiated by Saif el-Islam Kadhafi, under US control. With other Al-Qaeda members and under Abdelhakim Belhaj’s authority [3], he took part as of February 2011 (three months later) in NATO’s operations in Libya, leading to the overthrow of the Jamahiriya and to Muammar al-Gaddafi’s lynching. One of al-Libi’s son’s was killed in retaliation by the nationalists in October 2011.

Kidnapped by the US Secretary of Defence in Tripoli (Lybia) on 6 October 2013, Abu Anas al-Libi was, according to the New York Times, transferred aboard the USS San Antonio, in the Mediterranean sea, to be interrogated [4] outside of the US legal system [5], to be eventually be handed over to US justice authorities in a few weeks or months.

The USS San Antonio is a landing ship, and it’s holds have been transformed into a secret prison by the US Navy. The detainees are interrogated following a program based on Dr. Martin Seligman’s techniques [6]. The goal is not to extract information, but to condition the victims. Officially, President Barack Obama was supposed to have shut down these secret prisons and forbidden torture.

The United-States had not claimed responsibility for an abduction contravening international law since that of Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame on April 19th 2011 (which was made public two months later).