Muammar Gaddafi’s spy chief Senussi arrested in Mauritania

The capture of the 63-year-old spy chief, a heavy-set man with a thick jawline
and bushy black eyebrows, comes after he spent several months on the run.

Security sources in Niger and Mali said in October that Senussi and several of
his men passed through their territory. A month later, Libya’s new
government announced his arrest but no pictures of Senussi have been
released since then.

Senussi was known as Col Gaddafi’s right-hand-man. Most notorious for Libyans
is the allegation that he gave the order for the massacre of 1,200 political
inmates in Abu Salim prison in 1996.

After riots broke out over prisoner’s demands for better food and sanitation,
Libyans believe Senussi gave the order to guards stationed on the grated
ceilings of the cells to fire, murdering the men inside.

For Britain, he will long be remembered for his involvement in the 1988
Lockerbie bombing in which 270 people were killed.

In his then capacity as head of Libyan external security he was thought to
have recruited Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the man convicted of the attack, and
then released in circumstances that remain unclear.

The French will remember him for his role in masterminding the bombing of a
French airliner over Niger in 1989 in which 170 people were killed.

That led to a 1999 case in which he was convicted in absentia in France. He
has been unable to travel abroad freely since then.

Senussi was reported to have been captured in Libya in November, but the
National Transitional Council were unable to provide evidence of his
capture.

On 4 December 2011, Abdullah Nakir, a Libyan official, told Al Arabiya that
Senussi was arrested and was being questioned about a secret nuclear
facility Gaddafi was operating, but admitted that the Libyan government was
unable to produce any photographs of him in detention.

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