Al-Libi was captured in
Tripoli, Libya, on 5 October 2013 by
U.S. Army Delta Force operators, with the assistance of
FBI agents and
CIA officers. He was seized in a pre-dawn raid and removed from Libya. The
US Navy's
DEVGRU conducted a
simultaneous raid in Somalia targeting the alleged mastermind of the
Westgate shopping mall attack in
Kenya, possibly to avoid either action sending the other target into hiding. A day after Al-Libi was captured, he was in military custody on the ship
USS San Antonio in the
Mediterranean Sea. On 10 February 2014, a 30 seconds
CCTV video showing U.S. commandos capturing al-Libi was published by
The Washington Post. According to strategist and counterinsurgency expert
David Kilcullen, the collapse of
Ali Zeidan's government and the ensuing "fragmentation of Libya [...] resulted, in part, from the raid al-Libi's capture".
Court appearance On 15 October 2013, al-Libi appeared in a
Manhattan federal court and pleaded not guilty to terrorism charges, including helping to plan the U.S. embassy bombings in
Kenya and
Tanzania. He was held without bail due to concerns that he was a flight risk and a danger to the community. His trial, along with his co-defendant
Khalid al-Fawwaz, a.k.a. "Khaled Abdul Rahman Hamad al Fawwaz," a.k.a. "Abu Omar," a.k.a. "Hamad," was scheduled to begin on 3 November 2014, before Judge
Lewis A. Kaplan. ==Death==