Militant Islam Monitor > Articles > Bin Laden deputy Al Libbi betrayed by skin disorder - Al Qaeda # 3 man captured in Pakistan Bin Laden deputy Al Libbi betrayed by skin disorder - Al Qaeda # 3 man captured in PakistanFirefight preceded capture as terrorist tried to flee on motorcycle
This picture released by Pakistan's Interior Ministry shows senior al-Qaida suspect Abu Faraj al-Libbi Wednesday in Islamabad, Pakistan. MIM: For terrorist 'scorecard' list of captured and wanted terrorists and their positions the worldwide Jihad network see: http://www.angelfire.com/ultra/terroristscorecard/ --------------------------------------------------------------------- Excerpts from "They've Got Him Now What?" by Michael Isikoff and Marc Hosenball details Al Libbi's capture: May 16 issue - Abu Faraj al-Libbi had no idea he was about to go down. Last Monday, the Qaeda operative, believed to be one of Osama bin Laden's closest henchmen, was hiding out in Mardan, a small frontier town in northwest Pakistan. As he rode along the streets on the back of a motorbike driven by another man, he came upon a group of women dressed head to toe in black burqas. Nothing unusual about that. Except that some of the women were actually men, Pakistani security agents concealing automatic weapons in the billowing folds. They had gone to Mardan after receiving tips from informants that "foreigners" were in the area. When al-Libbi reached his destination, the agents threw off their cover and rushed him. Shots were fired. Panicked, al-Libbi tried to run away. "I'm a jihadi! Protect me, help me!" he pleaded to pedestrians as he fled. No one came to his aid. He ducked into a house and locked himself inside a room. The agents lobbed tear gas through a window. Al-Libbi emerged, choking on fumes. It wasn't until later that his pursuers realized they had brought down the most wanted man in Pakistan. http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7775421/site/newsweek/ --------------------------------------- (AP Photo/Pakistan Interior Ministry, HO) Al-Libbi betrayed by skin disorder But a very different face appeared on Wednesday in the first photograph after his capture. Not just the straggly beard and haunted look, but the facial blotching caused by the skin disorder leucoderma, or vitiligo, the condition suffered by pop star Michael Jackson. "It was easy for us to immediately recognise him because he is suffering from this peculiar skin disease and it was not difficult to know that 'yes, we've got al-Libbi", a government minister said on condition of anonymity. Until a year ago the 40-year-old Libyan was a relative unknown. When he first came to prominence in Pakistan during interrogations after two assassination attempts on President Pervez Musharraf in December 2003, intelligence agencies only knew him as Dr Taufeeq. But investigators then rounded up a key Pakistani militant, Salahuddin Bhatti, and his grilling disclosed both al-Libbi's origins and his position in the al-Qaeda hierarchy as the operational chief in Pakistan. They soon realised that he had filled the vacuum left by the capture in March 2003 of key 9/11 planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Further confirmation emerged when security forces captured the terror network's computer expert Naeem Noor Khan and Tanzanian Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, wanted by the US for bombing two American embassies in East Africa in 1998. "Both Naeem and Khalfan used to get instructions from him also," a security official who was involved in the initial interrogation of the duo said. Their arrests in July last year revealed al-Qaeda had planned terror attacks in the US and Britain that led to a worldwide terror alert. "The information that we had gathered about him was that he had been getting instructions from Osama bin Laden," another security official said. According to Pakistan and US defence officials, he became a senior member of what is left of the al-Qaeda leadership from before the US-led military campaign that removed the Taliban from power in Afghanistan. Al-Libbi is thought to have become bin Laden's personal assistant during the 1990s, when he was involved in providing training to militants at the Al-Farooq camp near the Afghan capital Kabul before the war, security officials said. The connections he developed there also gave him access to the funds and the manpower to mastermind a string of terrorist attacks – and the ability to blend into the background of Pakistan's chaotic cities and towns. He also had a Pakistani wife. One of his key contacts became Pakistani al-Qaeda militant Amjad Farooqi, who was gunned down by security forces last September. A recruiter of militants and suicide bombers from the ranks of Pakistan's sectarian Islamic groups and the jihad holy warriors trained in Afghan camps to fight there and in divided Kashmir, Farooqi got al-Libbi the men he needed for his terror plans. Al-Libbi also used his contacts to evade arrest, moving from one place to the other, living in Lahore with Ghailani then the south-west province of Baluchistan and finally conservative Northwest Frontier Province. It was there, in the town of Mardan, that security forces captured him as he rode on a motorcycle with another man on Monday. Security officials now hope they can use al-Libbi's network of militants themselves – to track down the rest of the al-Qaeda leadership and possibly bin Laden himself. "He is one of his closest confidants and he should be able to provide new leads about Osama," another security official said on condition of anonymity.
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