The suspected al-Qaida figure nabbed by US special forces in a dramatic operation in the Libyan capital had been living freely in his homeland after his return there three years ago, his family said. Libya’s government asked for an explanation yesterday from the United States after the Americans seized Abu Anas al-Libi from a Tripoli street outside his home and whisked him out of the country.

The raid that captured al-Libi was one of two dramatic American raids on the ground in African countries targeting suspected terrorists on Saturday. In Somalia, a Navy SEAL team swam ashore early the same day and engaged in a fierce firefight, thought it did not capture its target, a militant suspected in the recent Kenyan mall siege.

The operations – one in North Africa, the other in the Horn of Africa – were a startling move to pursue terror suspects directly in two countries mired in chaos where the United States has suffered bloody humiliations in the past.

“We hope that this makes clear that the United States of America will never stop in the effort to hold those accountable who conduct acts of terror,” US Secretary of State John Kerry said yesterday while in Indonesia for an economic summit. “Members of al-Qaida and other terrorist organisations literally can run but they can’t hide.”

The Pentagon identified the figure seized in the Libyan capital Saturday as Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai, known by his alias Abu Anas al-Libi, who is accused by the US of involvement in the 1998 bombings of two American embassies in Africa. He has been on the FBI’s most wanted terrorists list since it was introduced shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks. There was a US$5 million bounty on his head.

The US Defence Department’s chief spokesman, George Little, said the suspect is “lawfully detained under the law of war in a secure location outside of Libya.” Little’s statement did not elaborate.

Al-Libi was indicted by a federal court in New York for his alleged role in the bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, on August 7, 1998, that killed more than 220 people.

But it was not immediately clear if he had been involved with al-Qaida since or had been connected to militant activities in Libya, where al-Qaida has a growing presence since the 2011 ouster of Moammar Gadhafi.

His family denied he was ever a member of al-Qaida and said he was not involved in militant activity since his return.

Al-Libi’s son Abdullah al-Ruqai told The Associated Press his father was a member of the Armed Islamic Fighting Group, an Islamic militant group that battled Gadhafi’s regime, many of whose members were forced to flee the country in the 1990s. Some members later linked with al-Qaida, but others did not. Abdullah said his father and the family were in Afghanistan for about a year in and half in the early 2000s.

Al-Libi was then imprisoned in Iran for seven years, Abdullah said. He did not elaborate, but Iran jailed a number of al-Qaida-linked figures who fled Afghanistan after the 2001 US-led invasion of that country.

The family returned to Tripoli in 2010 under a rehabilitation program run by Gadhafi’s son. Since then, al-Libi was not involved with any groups. “He would go from the house to the mosque, and from the mosque to the house,” the son said. He said his father had hired a lawyer and was trying to clear his name in connection to the 1998 African embassy attacks.

A senior US military official said the Tripoli raid was carried out by the U.S. Army’s Delta Force, which has responsibility for counterterrorism operations in North Africa. The official was not authorised to speak publicly about the operation and discussed it on condition of anonymity.

Family members said gunmen in a three-car convoy seized al-Libi outside his home in the Libyan capital.