The Libyan government has officially asked the US for “clarifications” today after the weekend raid against the nation’s capital city and the abduction of a Libyan citizen by US troops.
The captured Libyan, Abdul-Hamad al-Quqal, was kidnapped outside of his home in eastern Tripoli when foreign “commandos” attacked him and dragged him off at gunpoint, later revealed to be US special forces.
The US is arguing that Quqal was responsible for the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and says he was “lawfully detained” in military custody, though the Libyan government is apparently less than enthused that he was taken away in a military raid and is being held incommunicado on a ship.
The legality of raiding a friendly country and capturing one of its citizens at gunpoint is shaky, to say the least, but US officials defended the move, and seem fine with using foreign military operations against major cities instead of seeking extradition.
But we get all up on our moral high-horse about "respect for the rule of law" as somehow a great boon of US intervention around the world. What respect for the rule of law? We've become a rogue hyperpower, and there's nothing anyone, here or abroad, can do to stop it. It's right up there with our lectures about who has the right to be responsible possessors of nuclear weapoins. There is, after all, only one nation that has used nuclear weapons, on densely populated civilian cities no less. Who are the terrorists?
…but we'll all feel better after he "confesses" ….
….and they toss someone's corpse, ostensibly his, into the drink…with no witnesses to it even after a few years.
There goes the rouge state again, kidnapping a citizen from a sovereign nation without due process of the law. Is this pay back for Benghazi to make Obama look good?
Anas al-Liby, otherwise known as Abdul-Hamad al-Quqal, had already been "captured" a decade ago.
See: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1717297.stm
Anas al-Liby was one of the FBI's list of most-wanted. He was captured in eastern Afghanistan in January 2002.
The 38-year-old Libyan had been living in the UK and is linked by the Americans to the US embassy bombings in Africa.
Interesting although it could just be an error in reporting on the BBC's behalf.
What is more interesting is that Anas al Libi was used as a cell in 96 as part of a Gadaffi assassination attempt by MI6 and sheltered by MI6 living in Manchester until 2000.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2002/nov/10/u…
Libya wants "clarification" so they can pretend for their fractured and warring public that they didn't allow this, now that they are an unruly vassal for NATO on the Mediterranean.
What these people are thinking, in one hand Libya is under the control of no government or what they have is not capable governing anything, than there are these jihadists and other form of terrorists ruling the Libyan streets and borders waiting to steal whatever from whoever crossing the borders living rest of the country unprotected and now they want clarification on US kidnapping raid. Secondly, kidnapping only one Al-Qaeda leader in Libya is highly questionable because the kidnapped Al-Qaeda leader must been a lonely man sleeping alone waiting for these guys to show up and kidnap him.