Senior Al-Qaeda Official Captured in Sudan: Washington Post

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Senior Al-Qaeda Official Captured in Sudan: Washington Post

A senior Al-Qaeda official on the United States government's most-wanted list of international terrorists has been captured in Sudan, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday.

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A senior Al-Qaeda official on the United States government's most-wanted list of international terrorists has been captured in Sudan, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday.

Abu Anas Liby, 37, was accused by the U.S. of helping plan the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa and taking part in planning an attempted assassination of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in June 1995.

U.S. officials have been negotiating for more than a month with the Sudanese government to have Liby transferred to Egypt, the newspaper said, citing senior U.S. government officials.

Liby is the most senior al-Qaeda member to be arrested since the September 11 terror attacks, and also the first captured alive among the Bush administration's group of most wanted terrorists, a roster of 22 names released on October 10.

Liby was one of nine terrorists arrested by the Sudanese government last month, the newspaper report said.

Born and raised in Tripoli, Libya, Liby joined al-Qaeda in the late 1980s or early 1990s. Around that time, after a crackdown on Muslim extremists by Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi, he fled for Sudan and soon earned a place on al-Qaeda's ruling council, or shura, according to the report.

He left Sudan before Osama bin Laden's departure for Afghanistan in 1996, moving to Qatar before settling in Manchester, England. He fled after being indicted two years ago in New York in connection with the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania.

British law enforcement authorities discovered incriminating evidence at his home, including a 180-page terrorist manual recorded on a computer disk, the report said.

Meanwhile, terrorism experts said Liby had made his way to Afghanistan, where he apparently helped lead at least the early phase of al-Qaeda's resistance to the U.S. military operation that began October 7. It is not known when he traveled to Sudan.

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