Libyan al-Qaeda suspect to appear in court in New York

         
An alleged senior al Qaeda figure captured in Libya by U.S. special forces earlier this month has been brought to the United States to face arraignment on federal terrorism charges, U.S. officials said on Monday.          

The Libyan, Nazih al-Ragye, better known as Abu Anas al-Liby, is a suspect in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 civilians.         

He was seized by a U.S. Army Delta Force squad on the streets of Tripoli on Oct. 5 and whisked onto a Navy ship in the Mediterranean Sea.            

He was flown to the United States and handed over to civilian law enforcement over the weekend and brought directly to the New York area, said U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, the chief federal prosecutor for Manhattan.              

Al-Liby is expected to appear before a judge on Tuesday, Bharara said in a statement. A criminal indictment was filed in 2001 against al-Liby and others suspected in the embassy bombings.               

U.S. officials initially said they expected al-Liby would be held aboard ship for weeks or months while under questioning by an elite U.S. interagency team known as the High-Value Target Interrogation Group, or HIG.              

But a law enforcement official said that, soon after his capture, it became clear to interrogators that al-Liby suffered from several pre-existing, chronic health conditions.              

The official said his transfer to the custody of civilian authorities in the United States was necessary because medical facilities aboard ship were not sophisticated enough to provide adequate care.              

Al-Liby's wife has said in media interviews that he suffers from Hepatitis C.            

David Patton, the chief public defender for New York who had requested that a judge appoint a defense lawyer for al-Liby, had no immediate comment on al-Liby's transfer.           

U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan declined on Friday to assign a court-appointed attorney to al-Liby until he had been formally arrested by law enforcement.            

It was not immediately known whether al-Liby cooperated with U.S. interrogators or provided them with intelligence of any value. He was in military custody for about 10 days.             


REUTERS