NEW YORK: A suspected leader of the attack on the US compound in Benghazi, Libya, captured by US forces and spirited out of the country, can expect to move quickly through the initial steps of the criminal justice system within hours of arriving on American soil.
Seized in a raid last Sunday, Libyan militant Ahmed Abu Khatallah is the suspected leader of a group implicated in the 2012 attack on a US diplomatic compound and CIA base in Benghazi.
A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Abu Khatallah was aboard the USS New York, an amphibious transport ship travelling toward the United States at normal speed.
Along the way he can expect to be questioned by intelligence experts and criminal investigators, and then delivered for arraignment to enter a plea and face questions about bond and the possible appointment of a public defender. “This is the way it’s going to be. When the US decides they’re going to indict someone abroad, they’re going to bring them to the criminal justice system,” not to military prisons as during the George W Bush administration, said Karen Greenberg, the director of Fordham University’s Center on National Security. “He’s going to be tried quickly.”
US Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans died in the Benghazi attack. Abu Khatallah is charged with killing a person on US property, a firearms violation and providing material support to terrorism. The charges were filed in July 2013 but kept under a court seal until Tuesday. He is expected to be formally indicted by a US grand jury.
The US Justice Department filed the charges against Abu Khatallah in US District Court in Washington, DC, a venue that prosecutors have only rarely used for criminal cases involving those suspected of terrorism. The courthouse is three blocks from where Congress meets. Reuters
