Who was al-Libi?

Abu Anas al-Libi just died in custody, presumably of liver cancer.

As noted in an earlier Cannonfire post, he was a very mysterious fellow -- an alleged terrorist who may have functioned as an informant for western intelligence.

The UK granted this guy asylum, even though he was accused of terrorist actions in the 1990s. The Daily Mail (and precious few other media outlets) spoke of the man's links to MI6. Apparently, on one occasion he had provided aid to British spooks hoping to kill Ghaddafy.

(I believe that this was the same plot revealed by David Shayler, a former British spook who went on to have a very interesting history. Did I ever tell that story to you folks? Wild stuff...)

There are those who say that al-Libi functioned as a double for Osama Bin Laden. Yes: A double agent posed as Bin Laden. Imagine the possibilities!

Wikipedia places the guy all over the damned place, doing all sorts of things, throughout the decade between 2002 and 2012. Somehow, he kept quite active in the field, even though he was also being held prisoner -- in more than one place. Simultaneously. I double-dog dares ya to make sense of the story: It's freakin' impossible.

On 7 June 2007, al-Libi, who remained on the FBI Most Wanted Terrorists list, was listed as a possible CIA "secret prisoner" by Amnesty International, without providing details or evidence.[16]

In September 2012, CNN reported that al-Libi returned to Libya after being imprisoned in Iran for almost a decade.

As I jokingly wrote in that earlier post,

Other reports have him attaining his graduate degree at Hogwarts in 2009, operating a Pizza Hut in Darjeeling between 2005 and 2010, handing out "Fair Play for Cuba" leaflets in New Orleans in 2008, and working in Santa's workshop disguised as an elf.

This story offers a persuasive argument that the guy was a double agent:

The operation to capture Abu Anas al-Liby on Libyan soil by U.S. Special Forces, who were disguised as Arabs and spoke Arabic dialects, came as quite a surprise. Most intelligence services operating in the region had believed al-Liby to be a double agent - which went a long way to explaining why the Americans had failed to target him for more than two years, despite being aware he was in Tripoli. According to a well-informed source, al-Liby had been put under CIA surveillance a year and a half ago.

Despite the aid that he may have given to the CIA and MI6, Delta Force operatives captured him in Tripoli in October of 2013. (The capture was protested by Ari Fleischer, of all people!) He was held prisoner in New York, where he was charged with participation in the 1998 embassy bombings.

Was he a double agent? Quite possibly. He could even have been tripled.

Well, let's put it this way: I suspect that his true loyalties were always to the jihad movement, even though he would feed information to western intelligence from time to time. Why would he do that? Two reasons: First, to deep-six enemies in the Islamic world (Ghaddafy and Bin Laden didn't exactly get along), and second, to earn himself a "get out of jail free" card in case the Americans caught him.

Which they did. Guess the card stopped working.

If my scenario is true (or anywhere near the truth), al-Libi's testimony in court might have proven rather embarrassing for certain parties. His liver disease was, therefore, more than a little convenient. The government delayed prosecution as long as possible, giving the Big C enough time to do its work.

Last October, al-Libi's lawyer claimed that his client was being denied treatment for his cancer. The lawyer denies that al-Libi had any connection to the embassy bombings and claims that al-Libi was brought to this country under legally dubious circumstances.

There is also the important question of videotapes of al-Libi being interrogated by military authorities. The lawyer claims that such tapes exist. (One can only imagine what al-Libi might have said!) The government denies the existence of this material. Of course, they also denied that tapes were made of Zacarias Moussaoui's interrogations. (We later learned that such evidence did exist but was deliberately destroyed.)

Marcy Wheeler seems to find the whole matter to be more than a little suspicious. So do I.