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Libyan militia leader gets 22-year sentence in Benghazi attacks that killed U.S. ambassador

Abu Khattala was photographed shortly after his apprehension by U.S. special forces south of Benghazi, Libya, in June 2014. (U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia/)

A Libyan militia leader convicted in the deadly 2012 Benghazi attacks that killed a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans was sentenced to 22 years in prison Wednesday by a federal judge in the District of Columbia.

A federal jury in November acquitted Ahmed Abu Khattala, 47, of murder and attempted murder in the overnight attacks that began Sept. 11, 2012, on a U.S. diplomatic mission and nearby CIA post. But he was convicted on charges including conspiracy and providing material support to terrorists, and it is the extent of Abu Khattala’s role as ringleader that U.S. District Judge Christopher R. “Casey” Cooper considered in sentencing him.

Legal analysts said the ability of the government to incapacitate Abu Khattala through a life sentence or its practical equivalent would influence decisions whether to seek civilian prosecutions in similar cases in the future. Prosecutors had sought a life sentence; the defense sought 15 years. While some observers saw Cooper’s judgment as a setback for prosecutors, he cast it otherwise.

“Even if you did not pour the gasoline or light the match, the evidence showed you were aware of the attack, and once the gates were breached, the likelihood someone would die was extreme high. This was not guilt by association,” Cooper told Abu Khattala. “This case stands as an exemplar for the principle that a defendant accused of international terrorism can get a fair trial in the U.S. criminal justice system.”

Federal prosecutors said Abu Khattala helped mastermind a terrorist strike abroad that resulted in the deaths of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three others and that he deserved the maximum punishment.

Ahmed Abu Khattala listens to an interpreter through earphones in October 2017, during the opening of his federal trial in Washington. (Dana Verkouteren/AP)

“This fact alone, the first killing of a U.S. Ambassador while in the performance of his duties in nearly 40 years, makes this case a truly singular event and warrants imposition of the maximum sentence permissible under the law,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael C. DiLorenzo wrote in a sentencing recommendation by prosecutors.

The attacks also killed State Department employee Sean Smith — who died with Stevens in a fire at a U.S. mission residence — and CIA contractors Tyrone S. Woods and Glen Doherty, who died in a mortar attack as the rampage shifted to a CIA annex in Benghazi.

Related: [Accused Benghazi ringleader convicted on terrorism charges in 2012 attacks that killed U.S. ambassador]

Families of those killed, along with those wounded in the attack, submitted sealed statements to the judge, and Doherty’s and Woods’s families sat in the courtroom.

Woods’s widow, Dorothy, addressed the court, asking the judge to impose a life sentence to send a “message clear and strong” to Americans fighting on the front lines against terrorism “that I got your [back].” She said the attacks left her asking what was next for her and the couple’s 5-year-old son and wondering, “Will Ty have died for nothing?”

Abu Khattala’s defense noted that jurors had found him not guilty of the murders of Stevens and Smith, arguing that the jury had concluded that Abu Khattala joined the conspiracy at the mission after it was already was on fire. The defense wrote that the jury explicitly found that Abu Khattala’s “conduct for which it did convict did not result in death.”

The defense noted that jurors also acquitted Abu Khattala of all charges in the related attack hours later on the nearby CIA annex. “The Court should respect the jury’s verdict . . . to impose a sentence that is not based on acquitted conduct or allegations not supported by the verdict,” wrote Jeffrey D. Robinson for attorneys with Federal Defender of the District A.J. Kramer and the law firm Lewis Baach Kaufmann Middlemiss.

The case was seen as a test of detention and interrogation policies developed under the Obama administration to capture terrorism suspects overseas for criminal trial.

Related: [Thirteen days in the history of the accused leader of the Benghazi attacks]

Abu Khattala was the first person convicted in the attacks. The Trump administration ordered the Oct. 29 capture of a second suspect, Mustafa al-Imam, who was brought to Washington and pleaded not guilty. But the mixed Abu Khattala verdict showed the challenge of investigating and prosecuting such cases.

Abu Khattala was a leader of an extremist militia that sought to establish strict Islamist rule in Libya and oust the U.S. intelligence presence in Benghazi after Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown. U.S. intelligence assessments have reported several groups were involved in the attacks, including Abu Khattala’s brigade.

Prosecutors presented what they called “indisputable” records linking the times of calls on Abu Khattala’s cellphone — but not call contents — to surveillance video taken at the diplomatic mission. They argued the links showed he was at least a key plotter with several participants in the attack in the minutes before, during and after the assault.

At trial, Abu Khattala’s attorneys said he was drawn to the scene as a bystander and that others were responsible for the attack. They questioned the credibility of three key Libyan witnesses who testified that they saw Abu Khattal plan, execute and claim responsibility for the attacks.

Related: [Meet Ahmed Abu Khattala, an alleged ringleader of the Benghazi attack]

In a pre-sentence opinion, Cooper acknowledged the defense argument that the jury did not find that evidence showed beyond a reasonable doubt that Abu Khattala directly had a hand in the deaths, partly because he showed up on video entering the mission after the attack was mostly over.

Cooper said it was likelier that the jurors found in their deliberations that Abu Khattala helped plan the assault but that they stopped just short of finding that one of his men set the fatal fire — a finding that would not rule out Abu Khattala as a leader in the attack.

During sentencing, judges can consider whether evidence showed it is more likely than not that a defendant committed certain acts and factor in such “relevant conduct” in setting punishment. Cooper wrote that the practice may be “controversial” but has repeatedly been found to be constitutional.

Abu Khattala “did not himself set the fires at the Mission that killed Ambassador Stevens and Sean Patrick Smith, but . . . it is more likely than not that he agreed with several other participants to launch an armed attack on the Mission, and the attack foreseeably resulted in deaths that furthered the ends of the conspiracy,” Cooper wrote.

Abu Khattala’s trial shifted the Benghazi inquiry away from partisan politics. Republicans and conservative groups had used the deadly attack throughout the 2016 presidential election to slam Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, who was secretary of state at the time of the attack.

In an email to CIA employees after Abu Khattala was convicted, then-director Mike Pompeo, now President Trump’s secretary of state, called the 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,” Pompeo said. Abu Khattala’s sentencing “is to follow; but no term in prison will bring our people back.”

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Spencer S. Hsu is an investigative reporter, two-time Pulitzer finalist and national Emmy Award nominee. Hsu has covered homeland security, immigration, Virginia politics and Congress.

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