WASHINGTON — One of the architects of the deadly 2012 attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya, has been arrested and will be prosecuted on arson, murder and terrorism charges, Justice Department officials announced Friday.
“ Zubayr Al-Bakoush landed at Andrews Air Force Base at 3 a.m. this morning. He is in our custody. He was greeted by [FBI] Director [Kash] Patel and [DC] US Attorney Jeanine Pirro,” Attorney General Pam Bondi told reporters at DOJ headquaters. .
Prosecutors “will prosecute this alleged terrorist to the fullest extent of the law,” Bondi vowed, while Pirro said she and her team “will not stop” hunting down other attackers who remain at large.
“The Benghazi saga was a painful one for Americans. It has stayed with all of us. And let me be very clear, there are more of them out there,” the US attorney said, sharing how she and Patel had kept in touch with family members of the four Americans killed in the attack.
“Time will not stop us from going after these predators, no matter how long it takes, in order to fulfill our obligation to those families who suffered horrific pain at the hands of these violent terrorists,” Pirro added.
The Sept. 11, 2012, assault on the diplomatic compound in Libya’s second-largest city took the lives of US Ambassador Chris Stevens, State Department official Sean Smith and CIA contractors Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods.
Islamic militants stormed the complex and set fire to it while launching mortars at a nearby CIA facility as part of a coordinated assault.
Stevens and Smith died while trapped inside the compound, while Doherty and Woods were killed defending it.
Officials in the Obama administration suggested in the immediate aftermath that the attack was a spontaneous offshoot of protests over an anti-Muslim video rocketing around the internet.
A select House committee investigation found five years later that Obama officials failed to deploy military assets to Libya.
No diplomatic security agents in Benghazi attributed the attack to a “video” or “protest,” the report also noted, even as the White House used those exact words to explain the bloodshed.
Then-UN Ambassador Susan Rice, for example, had said on Sept. 16, 2012: “What sparked the recent violence was the airing on the Internet of a very hateful, very offensive video that has offended many people around the world.”
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) pressed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over the failures that led to the attack during a 2013 congressional hearing, leading the future Democratic presidential nominee to snap: “What difference, at this point, does it make?”
“Hillary Clinton famously once said about Benghazi, ‘What difference, at this point, does it make?’ Well, it makes a difference to Donald Trump. It makes a difference to those families,” Bondi said Friday.
“And 14 years later, it makes a difference to law enforcement.”
“Let this case serve as a reminder,” she added. “If you commit a crime against the American people anywhere in this world, President Trump’s Justice Department will find you. It might not happen overnight, but it will happen. You can run, but you cannot hide.”
Patel said he worked on the Benghazi case as a young prosecutor and said the arrest of Zubayr Al-Bakoush has brought the tragic episode “full circle.”
“When an act of terrorism of this magnitude strikes at the heart of our nation, we go to work,” the FBI boss told reporters.
“I was at the airfield with US Attorney Pirro earlier this morning when we did the formal, foreign transfer of custody of Bakoush into US custody to face prosecution,” he said. “And her office and the Department of Justice are going to execute justice for the fallen.”
Pirro added: “President Trump will make sure that the cavalry comes for Americans, no matter where they are in this world.”
“An American ambassador, elite military personnel and a State Department employee were all violently murdered,” she said. “The American cavalry never came. For 13 hours, [the victims] waited for help that never came.”
In October 2017, Mustafa al-Imam, another militant suspected of involvement in the attack, was captured by US special forces in Libya. He was later convicted of federal terrorism charges and sentenced to 19 years and eight months in prison.
