Libyan Government Demands Explanation After U.S. Raid

TRIPOLI, Libya — A day after American commandos carried out raids in two African countries aimed at capturing fugitive terrorist suspects, Libya’s interim government on Sunday demanded an explanation from Washington for what it called the “kidnapping” of a Libyan suspect. In the capital, Tripoli, Libyan civilians and political officials reacted with surprise and confusion.  

On Saturday, American troops assisted by F.B.I. and C.I.A. agents seized Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai, known by his nom de guerre, Abu Anas al-Liby, a suspected leader of Al Qaeda, on the streets of Tripoli. At around the same time, a Navy SEAL team raided the seaside villa of a militant leader in a predawn firefight on the coast of Somalia. 

Abu Anas was indicted in 2000 for his role in the 1998 bombings of the United States Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and had a $5 million bounty on his head. 

“It was a good thing,” said a businessman in Tripoli who asked to be identified only by his given name, Hassan, referring to the capture of Abu Anas. “These men are the main reason we are facing issues like this, and they should be taken out of the country. Even my friends were happy to clean the country of those terrorists.” 

Libyan officials and members of Parliament said they could not comment on the raid because they did not know all the facts. 

Other Libyans said they were angered that the raid had caught their government by surprise and that foreign troops were conducting military operations in their country. They also expressed concern that Islamists would retaliate, perhaps by attacking the American Embassy here, and that the Americans would strike back, leading to an escalation in violence. 

In Somalia, the SEAL team emerged before sunrise from the Indian Ocean and exchanged gunfire with militants at the home of a senior leader of the Shabab, a Somali militant group. The raid was planned more than a week ago, officials said, after a massacre by the Shabab at a shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya, that killed more than 60 people two weeks ago. 

The SEAL team was forced to withdraw before it could confirm that it had killed the Shabab leader, a senior American security official said. Officials declined to identify the target. 

Officials said the timing of the two raids was coincidental. But occurring on the same day, they underscored the rise of northern Africa as a haven for international terrorists. Libya has collapsed into the control of a patchwork of militias since the ouster of the Qaddafi government in 2011. Somalia, the birthplace of the Shabab, has lacked an effective central government for more than two decades. 

With President Obama locked in a standoff with Congressional Republicans and his leadership criticized for a policy reversal in Syria, the raids could fuel accusations among his critics that the administration was eager for a showy foreign-policy victory. 

Abu Anas, the Libyan Qaeda leader, was considered a major prize, and officials said he was alive in American custody. While the details about his capture were sketchy, an American official said on Saturday night that it appeared that he had been taken peacefully and that he was “no longer in Libya.” 

His capture was the latest blow to what remains of the original Qaeda organization after a 12-year American campaign to capture or kill its leadership, including the killing two years ago of its founder, Osama bin Laden, in Pakistan. 

But on Sunday, Libya’s government called for more information regarding the American operation.

“As soon as it heard the reports, the Libyan government contacted the United States authorities to demand an explanation” for “the kidnapping of a Libyan citizen,” the government said in a statement. 

The demand appeared to contradict the statements of American officials on Saturday that the Libyan government had played some role in the seizure of Abu Anas. 

His capture signaled a significant break with Washington’s previous reluctance to send American Special Operations forces into Libya to detain wanted terrorists or suspects in the deadly attack on the diplomatic mission in Benghazi in 2012. The United States government had refrained from such interventions for fear of setting off a backlash that could destabilize or overwhelm Libya’s fledgling transitional government, which is still struggling to muster a viable national police force or military. 

But American officials have now apparently run out of patience, potentially signaling a new willingness to try to apprehend suspects in the Benghazi attack, as well.