Tripoli: Hundreds of mourners attended the funeral yesterday of Abu Anas Al Libi, an Al Qaeda suspect who died in the United States days before facing a trial for bombing US embassies.
Libi had been due to stand trial Monday over 1998 attacks on the US missions in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people and wounded around 5,000.
Libi, whose real name was Nazih Abdul Hamed Al Raghie, was snatched in Tripoli by US commandos in October 2013. Suffering from hepatitis C and liver cancer, he died in a New York hospital on January 2.
Hundreds of mourners recited special prayers for the dead at Martyrs Square in central Tripoli before joining a funeral procession to Bashusha cemetery where Libi was buried, an AFP photographer said.
Libi’s body was flown to Tripoli Friday and immediately taken to his family home in the west of the city, according to one of his sons, Abdullah Nazih
Al Raghie.
A member of an Islamist-led government in Libya, which is not recognised by the international community, told mourners there “is speculation about how he died in prison”.
“The American authorities must shed light on details of his death,” said Mohammad Attiyeh Al Jazwi, a minister in charge of “martyrs and the wounded” in the so-called National Salvation government.
But a source close to the family said they had declined an autopsy and wanted to bury him immediately after the body’s arrival in the North
African country.
A computer expert, Libi had been on the FBI’s most wanted list with a $5m price on his head prior to his arrest.
The August 7, 1998 car bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi killed 213 people and wounded 5,000. A near simultaneous truck bomb outside the US mission in Tanzania killed 11 people and injured 70. Libi was taken to a New York hospital on New Year’s eve after what the federal prosecutor in the region, Preet Bharara, said were “sudden complications arising out of his long-standing medical problems.”
His lawyer, Bernard Kleinman, told The Washington Post the health of his client had deteriorated significantly in the last month.
Libi’s son Abdullah told AFP his father had been in a coma before his death and that the family holds the US government “fully responsible” for his demise. Libi and Saudi co-defendant Khalid al-Fawwaz had pleaded not guilty to conspiracy charges. AFP
