U.S. Special Forces kill al Shabab leader in Somalia, capture al Qaeda fugitive in Libya

Witnesses in the area told the Times that there was a firefight lasting over an hour, with helicopters called in for air support. A senior Somali government official who spoke on the condition of anonymity confirmed the raid, saying, “The attack was carried out by the American forces and the Somali government was pre-informed about the attack.”

A spokesman for the Shabab, which is based in Somalia, said that one of its fighters had been killed in an exchange.

The FBI sent dozens of agents to Nairobi after the militant group’s attack on the shopping mall to help Kenyan law enforcement with the investigation. U.S. security officials have for some time now been warning that al Shabab could attempt attacks on American soil which would be similar to the attack on the Nairobi shopping mall. Such attacks may be carried out by Somali-American supporters of al Shabab.

The Washington Post reports that Western officials have grown alarmed that a group which was thought to have had limited ability to operate outside Somalia is now willing to call on supporters, including dual-national Somalis, to carry out attacks abroad.

Officials told the Times that the Saturday raid was aimed to reduce the capabilities of al Shabab and its Kenyan affiliate, al Hijra. The villa which was attacked was known as a place where senior foreign commanders stayed, and a witness in Baraawe told the paper that twelve well-trained Shabab fighters scheduled for a mission abroad were staying there at the time of the assault.

The 2009 killing of al Shabab leader Nabham was related to the 1998 attack on U.S. embassies, and it would take until early 2011 for the Obama administration to begin to focus on al Shabab as an immediate threat to the United States and its interests. This recognition was prompted by intelligence that showed growing cooperation and increasing ties between some of the al Shabab leadership and Yemen-based al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQIP). The new administration’s policy placed top al Shabaab figures with links to the Yemen group on target lists. President Obama authorized the first drone strike against two senior al Shabab figures in Somalia in June 2011.

This has been the U.S. policy since.

Libya
U.S. Special Forces captured Nazih Abd al Hamid al-Ruqhay, known by his nom de guerre, Abu Anas el-Liby, a senior leader of al Qaeda indicted in the 1998 bombings of the United States embassies in Kenya and. The capture ends a 15-year manhunt.

El-Liby, since 2000, has been high on the list of the U.S. government’s most-wanted list, and the FBI had placed a $5 million reward on his head.

The New York Times reports that Abu Anas was captured near Tripoli in a joint operation by the U.S. military, the CIA and the FBI, and is now in American custody.

Senior officials of the Libyan transitional government told the Times they were unaware of the operation that captured him. Some in the Libyan government strongly insisted that Libyan forces would play no role in any such American military operation on Libyan soil.

American official, however, said the Libyan government was involved in the operation.

Libya is currently a lawless country, and it does not have a functioning centralized governing structure. The country’s powerful security services – the army, police, and intelligence services – have disbanded after the fall of Col. Qaddafi’s fall in November 2011. Different parts of the country are instead controlled by shifting coalitions among the dozens of armed militias.

Abu Anas, 49, was born in Tripoli and joined Bin Laden’s organization as early as the early 1990s. In the mid-1990s he moved to Britain, where he had been given political asylum. The Times notes that after the 1998 bombing, the British police raided his apartment and found an 18-chapter terrorist training manual in Arabic. Titled “Military Studies in the Jihad against the Tyrants,” it included advice on car bombing, torture, sabotage, and disguise.

An American official said Abu Anas will be brought to the United States for trial.