USA Today reports that U.S. intelligence has obtained CD-ROM copies of a six-volume al Qaeda manual, believed to be used to train recruits in Afghanistan and elsewhere. The manual’s 18 chapters contain instructions on everything from basic religious indoctrination, al Qaeda membership criteria, communications and operational tradecraft, security, means of assassination, and evasion of capture and interrogation.
The manual was obtained in a search of the Manchester, U.K. home of Anas al-Libi. Al-Libi, whose real name was Nazih Abdul-Hamed Nabih al-Ruqai’i, was a Libyan indicted in the U.S. for his part in the 1998 African embassy bombings. (He died in January 2015.)
The al Qaeda manual was translated into English by the FBI and was subsequently introduced into evidence as part of the spring 2001 African embassy bombing trials in New York.