1 Boring Old Man

The first high value detainee of the War on Terror, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, was captured by the Pakistanis when he tried to cross the border. He was a paramilitary trainer in the Al Khaldan training camp in Afghanistan and personally knew Osama bin Laden. After being captured, he was initially successfully interrogated by the F.B.I., but then whisked away by the C.I.A. to Egypt. He was apparently the only real source for the Administration’s repeated claims that al Qaeda had ties to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq – information garnered under torture in Egypt; information the C.I.A. doubted was true; information al-Libi later recanted. When the Administration announced they were returning all the detainees from their overseas "black sites," al-Libi wasn’t in the group. Recently, he was found in a Lybian prison, where he’d been taken instead. Several weeks later, he was reported dead from suicide.