Surprising Death of "High Value" Detainee

A former CIA detainee has died in prison in Libya. Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi was the main source of Bush Administration claims that Saddam Hussein had provided chemical- and biological-weapons training for Al Qaeda operatives. After the US invaded Iraq, he recanted his entire story, stating that he had made it up to stop harsh treatment by his interrogators in Egypt. (He had been sent to Egypt by the CIA under the agency's "extraordinary rendition" program.)

A Libyan newspaper reported that Libi had committed suicide in his cell in a Libyan jail. Human rights workers and Libyan dissidents are demanding an independent investigation into his death.

Hafed al-Ghwell, a Libyan-American and prominent critic of the Kaddafi regime, says there were plenty of reasons to question the report that Libi had committed suicide. (The report appeared Sunday in Oea, a newspaper owned by Saif al-Islam, the influential son of Kaddafi, but contained no details about how Libi was supposed to have killed himself.) "This idea of committing suicide in your prison cell is an old story in Libya," Al-Ghwell explains. In the past, he adds, there have been a number of cases where political prisoners are reported to have committed suicide. Then the families get the bodies back and discover the prisoners had been shot in the back or tortured to death. "My gut feeling is that something fishy happened here and somebody in Libya panicked," he says. With the prospect that the Obama administration might release more Bush-era documents about the treatment of CIA detainees, officials in the Kaddafi regime had reasons to be concerned that their "complicity" in the U.S. war on terror would be exposed Al-Ghwell says.

After NEWSWEEK reported that Libi's recanted claims had been the basis for the bogus claims about Iraq-Al Qaeda ties, the Bush administration dropped all official references to Libi. He was conspicuously not among the "high-value detainees" sent to Guantánamo in September 2006 and was later reported to have been secretly shipped back to Libya. Only three weeks ago, on April 27, two workers with Human Rights Watch visited with Libi at the Al Saleem prison. The visit represented the first time any outsiders had been able to see Libi since his original capture by U.S. forces nearly eight years ago. Although Libi had previously been reported to have been ailing from tuberculosis, he appeared to be healthy and had no apparent physical ailments, says Heba Morayef, one of the Human Rights Watch workers present. Morayef says she and her colleague explained to Libi that they wanted to talk to him about the torture he had experienced while in custody. But after a few minutes, Libi grew visibly angry. "Where were you when I was being tortured in an American prison?" he said, according to Morayef. At that point, he walked out—never to be seen or heard from again, until his reported death this week.