A suspected Al Qaueda
leader who was to go on trial in New York this month for his alleged role in
the 1998 bombings of two American Embassies in East Africa died in government
custody yesterday night due to complications from longstanding medical
problems, federal prosecutors said.
The man, Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai, also known
as Abu Anas al-Libi, had had liver cancer. On Wednesday, he was taken to a
hospital in New York from the Metropolitan Correctional Center, where he had
been held since shortly after American commandos captured him in Libya in
October 2013.
Mr. Bharara said that federal marshals had been
in regular contact with Mr. Ruqai’s lawyer, who he said was with Mr. Ruqai
throughout the day Friday, as was an imam.
Mr. Ruqai, 50, had had a $5 million bounty on
his head until his capture in Tripoli, the Libyan capital, ended a 15-year
manhunt. He was taken peacefully into custody and interrogated before being
moved to New York to stand trial.
According to a 2000 indictment filed by
prosecutors in New York, Mr. Ruqai helped conduct “visual and photographic
surveillance” of the United States Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1993 and again
in 1995. The August 1998 bombing of that embassy killed more than 200 people,
including 12 Americans. Ten Tanzanians died in the attack on the embassy in
their country.
The authorities said that Mr. Ruqai had spoken
with other Al Qaeda leaders about attacking American targets in retaliation for
the United States peacekeeping operation in Somalia.
Mr. Ruqai, who was born in Tripoli, joined Al
Qaeda in the early 1990s, when it was based in Sudan and led by Osama bin
Laden. Several years later, he moved to Britain, claiming political asylum as a
Libyan dissident.
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