The case was seen as a test of detention and interrogation policies developed under the Obama administration to capture terror suspects overseas for criminal trial, with the outcome likely to figure into decisions about whether to use civilian courts for such terrorism prosecutions.
The jury in Washington, D.C., deliberated for five days after a seven-week trial. They convicted Ahmed Abu Khattala, 46, in the attack the night of Sept. 11 at a U.S. diplomatic mission that killed Stevens and State Department employee Sean Smith in a fire, and in a second attack that took place before dawn Sept. 12 on a nearby CIA annex, where CIA contractors Tyrone S. Woods and Glen Doherty were killed by mortar strikes.
The jury acquitted Abu Khattala of all but four of the 18 charges against him, finding him not guilty of the most serious charges, including murder. Abu Khattala becomes the first person convicted in the attacks, but the mixed verdict shows the challenge of investigating and bringing these types of cases.
At trial, his defense team said Abu Khattala was drawn to the fiery scene in his hometown as a bystander. They questioned the credibility of three Libyan witnesses who testified they saw or heard Abu Khattala take steps to plan, execute or claim responsibility for the attacks.
Prosecutors presented what they called “indisputable” records linking the times of calls on Abu Khattala’s cellphone — but not call contents — and surveillance video from the diplomatic mission attack that they said showed he was at least a key plotter. But they were pressed to prove events that erupted over a span of hours, five years ago overseas, in a place where the U.S. government had little presence and local authorities were weak and divided.
Abu Khattala faces up to 60 years in prison, including up to 15 years in prison for each of the two terrorism counts, and up to 20 years for the destruction of property. He also faces a mandatory minimum term of 10 years for using a semiautomatic weapon in a crime of violence, to be served on top of any other sentence.
Abu Khattala, wearing the same off-white long-sleeve shirt, gray pants and prison sneakers he had through most of the trial, sat without expression as the verdicts were read, except to cast an occasional glance into the courtroom gallery.
Prosecutors left without comment and his defense team led by Jeffrey Robinson and assistant federal defender Michelle Peterson, declined to comment.
Jurors were thanked by U.S. District Judge Christopher “Casey” Cooper in his chambers and left the courthouse a few blocks from the U.S. Capitol without commenting.
In an email message to employees on Tuesday, CIA Director Mike Pompeo called the Abu Khattala’s conviction “a small measure of justice.”
“It took intelligence to find him, soldiers to assist in capturing him, law enforcement to interview him, and a legal team to put him away. Khatallah’s sentencing is to follow; but no term in prison will bring our people back.”
Abu Khattala’s trial moved the Benghazi inquiry from the partisan political realm, where Republican claims of a Democratic coverup continued throughout the 2016 presidential contest, into a courthouse where the jury of 12 District residents sorted through six binders of exhibits and hours of video evidence.
Abu Khattala was a leader in an extremist brigade that was part of a militia seeking to establish strict Islamist rule in post-revolutionary Libya. U.S. intelligence assessments have reported several groups were involved in the attacks, including Abu Khattala’s brigade and the militia.
Stevens and Smith died of smoke inhalation after militants overran the diplomatic compound and set fire to the diplomatic villa. Woods and Doherty were killed on a rooftop at the CIA annex in a predawn mortar strike.
He was captured in June 2014 by U.S. commandos and interrogated and transported for 13 days aboard a Navy warship to the United States.
Onboard, he was questioned by two teams, the first working in a classified operation to extract intelligence and the second a separate FBI team that collected evidence for trial under the legal safeguards provided defendants in civilian court.
Abu Khattala has been the only person brought to court in the attacks. However, on Oct. 29, during his trial, U.S. authorities snatched a second suspect from Misurata, Libya, for prosecution in Washington. The suspect, Mustafa al-Imam, has pleaded not guilty.
The Trump administration recently showed a willingness to continue bringing terrorism cases in civilian courts, including additional Benghazi suspects. President Trump on Oct. 30 personally announced that “on my orders,” U.S. forces captured the second Benghazi suspect, Imam, to “face justice in the United States.”
Brian Egan, a senior White House and State Department legal adviser during the Obama administration, said the trial affirmed the integrity of the U.S. justice system even under extraordinary circumstances.
“That’s important for the rest of the world to see, given the amount of respect our criminal justice system has internationally, and the fact that the Guantanamo Bay military commission system has been so heavily criticized,” Egan said. “This case is really a good barometer for whether procedures the U.S. government put in place will prove to be useful.”
Before the trial began Oct. 2, Abu Khattala’s defense moved to toss his statements in military and FBI custody, arguing the shipboard detention without a lawyer present violated his legal rights and that the circumstances were so coercive they negated his signed waivers to a right to an attorney and against self-incrimination.
The government won a critical ruling from Cooper denying the motion, and upholding the government’s flexibility in handling overseas terrorism suspects.
University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladeck, who has written frequently about the handling of terrorism suspects, said passing judgment on the effectiveness of the civilian prosecution before sentencing is premature. “To my mind,” he said, “the verdict is much less important than whether the government at the end of the day is able to incapacitate someone like Abu Khattala,” who potentially could be imprisoned for the remainder of his life.
The judge’s rulings ahead of trial that upheld the two-fold questioning, he said, are “the far more important precedent” from a civil liberties perspective.
The trial featured dramatic testimony from surviving State Department and CIA operators, some taking the stand under fake names and disguised in wigs and mustaches to protect their identities.
Prosecutors also relied heavily on surveillance video taken by overhead drones and diplomatic compound cameras, and cellphone records the government obtained from Libyan authorities.
Key testimony came from three, paid Libyan informants all testifying under pseudonyms.
They included an undercover Libyan businessman who received $7 million for aiding the U.S. by approaching Abu Khattala as a financial supporter after the attacks, collecting incriminating statements from him, and luring him to his capture. The witness, testifying as Ali Majrisi, said he was present in 2013 when in conversation Abu Khattala, urged to conduct more spectacular attacks like those of al-Qaida in Iraq, allegedly said of the 2012 attacks, “I intended then to kill everybody [all the Americans] there, even those who were at the [Benghazi] airport.”
Months of sealed litigation and negotiations preceded the trial over tens of thousands of pages of classified documents about the case that the government turned over to the defense.
Most physical evidence burned to the ground or was destroyed or looted, and FBI agents were given only eight hours, three weeks after the attacks, to access both sites, one testified.
“It could also be, not a lot of people in Benghazi wanted to cooperate with the U.S. prosecution effort,” said Alice Hunt Friend, a Pentagon official who oversaw Africa security policy matters during the Obama administration from 2009 to 2014.
One clear public lesson from the trial, she added, is “how very, very difficult it is to track individual terror threats to Americans” and to collect either the very detailed intelligence needed to prevent an attack, or the evidence to prosecute one afterward.
“To go through the details of trying to marshal evidence sufficient to convict someone of a crime is a window into the kind of evidence needed in order to understand their tactics and to try to prevent” a future attack, Friend said, “It is an enormous challenge.”
The Washington Post’s Greg Miller contributed to this report.
