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U.S. Captures Top Suspect in Benghazi Siege, Pentagon Says U.S. Captures Top Suspect in Benghazi Siege, Pentagon Says
(about 4 hours later)
CAIRO — United States commandos have captured the suspected leader of the 2012 attack on the United States mission in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, White House and Pentagon officials said Tuesday. WASHINGTON — American commandos operating under the cover of night seized the man suspected of leading the deadly attack on the United States Mission in Benghazi, Libya, the government announced on Tuesday, ending a manhunt that had dragged on for nearly two years and inflamed domestic and international politics.
Apprehension of the suspect, Ahmed Abu Khattala, is a major breakthrough in the nearly two-year-old investigation into the attack, which also killed three other Americans, just two months before the presidential election in the United States. President Obama vowed swift action to bring the perpetrators to justice, but efforts to identify and prosecute the attackers were stymied by the chaos of the event and the broader mayhem in Libya. With drones hovering overhead, about two dozen Delta Force commandos and two or three F.B.I. agents descended on the outskirts of Benghazi just after midnight local time on Monday; grabbed the suspect, Ahmed Abu Khattala; stuffed him into a vehicle and raced away, according to officials briefed on the operation. No shots were fired, and the suspect was spirited out of Libya to a United States Navy warship in the Mediterranean.
Mr. Obama’s handling of the attack and the aftermath became a lightning rod for Republican critics. They accused him of misleading Americans about the circumstances behind it for his own political purposes and of failing to aggressively pursue those responsible — accusations that Mr. Obama and his defenders have strenuously denied. The capture was a breakthrough in finding the perpetrators of an episode that has been politically divisive from the start. President Obama and the State Department have been buffeted by multiple investigations and charges of misleading the public about the circumstances of the attack, which cost the lives of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans on Sept. 11, 2012. The president and administration officials have strongly rebutted the allegations and accused Republicans of politicizing a national tragedy.
Officials briefed on the investigation have said for more than a year that a plan to capture Mr. Abu Khattala was on Mr. Obama’s desk awaiting approval. But the administration held back, in part for fear that an American raid to retrieve him might further destabilize the already tenuous Libyan government. Through it all, Mr. Abu Khattala has remained free, at times almost taunting the United States to catch him, eliciting more criticism of Mr. Obama for not doing enough to bring him to justice. In recent months, Mr. Abu Khattala had gone underground. But fresh intelligence obtained last week indicated that he “was going to be in a specific place that was advantageous” because there would be few people around and less risk to American commandos, officials said. Mr. Obama gave the order on Friday to capture him.
Diplomats also suggested that the United States investigators might have been struggling to produce sufficient witness testimony and other evidence to convict Mr. Abu Khattala of responsibility for the deaths in an American court. “It’s important for us to send a message to the world that when Americans are attacked, no matter how long it takes, we will find those responsible, and we will bring them to justice,” Mr. Obama said during an unrelated trip to Pittsburgh on Tuesday. “And that’s a message I sent the day after it happened, and regardless of how long it takes, we will find you.”
In an interview with The New York Times shortly after the Benghazi attack, Mr. Abu Khattala scoffed at the American effort to hold him accountable — another reflection of the atmosphere of lawlessness that pervaded Libya after the overthrow and death of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the country’s longtime autocrat, in October 2011. The capture provided a rare piece of good news for Mr. Obama at a time when challenges have mushroomed in places like Iraq, Syria and Ukraine. Yet even a casualty-free raid generated further debate about what would happen to Mr. Abu Khattala.
The execution of the raid, which was first reported by The Washington Post, appears to signal that the investigators are confident in their case, and it may also reflect an acceptance that Libya is unlikely to become a stable partner in the pursuit of the culprits any time soon. Officials said he would be brought to the United States in the coming days to face charges in a civilian court. A sealed indictment sworn out secretly last July and made public on Tuesday outlined three counts against him in connection with the deaths of Mr. Stevens, Glen A. Doherty, Sean Smith and Tyrone S. Woods. But some Republicans argued that Mr. Abu Khattala was a terrorist who should be sent to the American military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and held as an enemy combatant.
Indeed, a renegade general based in Benghazi is currently waging a low-grade military campaign against local Islamist militants like Mr. Abu Khattala, and the United States may have sought to arrest the suspect before the general, Khalifa Heftar, killed him in the fighting there. Either way, the operation brought relief to relatives who had been eager for some sort of action to find the organizers of the attack. “It’s about time,” Charles Woods, the father of Tyrone Woods, said on Tuesday.
The Pentagon announced that Mr. Abu Khattala had been captured on Sunday. “All U.S. personnel involved in the operation have safely departed Libya,” the Pentagon spokesman, Rear Adm. John Kirby, said in a statement. He told reporters at a briefing that the operation had been carried out in Washington’s afternoon — presumably Sunday night local time in Libya — and that Libyan officials had been notified. He declined to specify whether the notification was given before, during or after Mr. Abu Khattala’s capture. “It was a unilateral, U.S. mission,” Admiral Kirby said. “We’ve been trying to be patient, and we’re very happy that this does seem part of the course of justice,” said Greg Doherty, Glen Doherty’s brother. “They assured us that this is not the end of their efforts, and they have a lot of good people working hard, and they haven’t forgotten us.”
Asked repeatedly why it took so long, he would only say that to properly and accurately identify Mr. Abu Khattala and move against him “takes a lot of planning.” Even as they hailed the capture, Obama administration officials were vague in explaining why it took so long to go after Mr. Abu Khattala, who was linked to the attack shortly after it happened and even gave an interview to a New York Times reporter over a strawberry frappé on a hotel patio without apparent fear of being found.
Mr. Obama also spoke about about the capture, describing it as a partial step in fulfilling his pledge to find those responsible for the lethal destruction of the American compound in Benghazi. Ambassador Stevens was the first American diplomat to die in a violent assault since 1979. Some American officials, who, like others, declined to be identified discussing sensitive operations, said there had been a proposal to capture Mr. Abu Khattala for at least a year. But it was not clear that Mr. Obama had considered such a plan. “It is not true that the president has had the operation sitting on his desk for a year,” said another official familiar with the White House’s point of view.
“Since the deadly attacks on our facilities in Benghazi, I have made it a priority to find and bring to justice those responsible for the deaths of four brave Americans,” Mr. Obama said in a statement. Officials said they had been waiting for the right combination of factors that would enable them to know where Mr. Abu Khattala would be at a specific time, in a situation that would minimize the chances of casualties.
The seizure of Mr. Abu Khattala by the American team, Mr. Obama said, “is a testament to the painstaking efforts of our military, law enforcement, and intelligence personnel. Because of their courage and professionalism, this individual will now face the full weight of the American justice system.” While Mr. Abu Khattala had kept a fairly high profile in Libya at first, he changed his pattern after American commandos seized the terror suspect Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai in October in a daylight raid in Tripoli, according to a law enforcement official. He became more difficult to track as he moved around quietly to evade detection, the official said. Then, last week, the official said, the United States obtained information about his whereabouts that enabled an operation.
Later, during a visit to Pittsburgh, Mr. Obama veered from prepared remarks to compliment the American team that captured Mr. Abu Khattala, saying the operation had been conducted with “incredible courage and precision.” He said that Mr. Abu Khattala was being transported to the United States. “We had finally worked out a scenario where we felt it was right operationally to be able to pull it off,” another official said. “The circumstances were right; the environment was right.”
“We continue to think about and pray for the families that were killed,” Mr. Obama said, adding that he wanted to send a message around the world that “when Americans are attacked, no matter how long it takes, we will find those responsible and we will bring them to justice.” Government agencies on Tuesday brushed off critics who asked why the authorities had needed so long to grab a man who met openly with a reporter. “Frankly, it’s not a surprise that an individual like this would show up for an interview,” said Jen Psaki, the State Department spokeswoman. “We don’t think they would show up for a scheduled meeting with the Special Forces.”
A United States law enforcement official said the military-law enforcement team — composed of American commandos and F.B.I. agents — captured Mr. Abu Khattala somewhere on the outskirts of Benghazi. No shots were fired, no civilians were hurt and no one else was taken into custody, the official said, in what was apparently a surprise raid. Rear Adm. John F. Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, scoffed at the idea that Mr. Abu Khattala should have been captured earlier. “The presumption in the question is that, you know, he was going to McDonald’s for milkshakes every Friday night, and we could have just picked him up in a taxicab,” he said. “I mean, these people deliberately tried to evade capture.”
“It was very clean, in and out, with no one hurt,” said the official, who was briefed on the operation and spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the operation. Asked if Mr. Abu Khattala was being transferred to the United States, the official said, “He’s not here — yet.” The official declined to offer any other details. By the time the president made the decision on Friday, officials said, his national security team was unanimous in supporting both the operation and the decision to bring Mr. Abu Khattala back to the United States for a civilian trial.
A senior American diplomat briefed on the operation rebuffed any notion that the timing of the raid had been arranged by the Obama administration to divert public attention from the Sunni militant offensive now convulsing Iraq, more than two years after Mr. Obama completed the withdrawal of American forces from that country. Both the Pentagon and the State Department referred to the operation as a “unilateral U.S. action.” An administration official said the United States had not told the Libyan government until after the operation, a choice that guarded against possible leaks and enabled Libyan officials to deny any involvement in case the capture led to popular protests.
“There was zero connection to Iraq,” the official said. The raid proceeded without complication, officials said. “It was very clean, in and out, with no one hurt,” said one official briefed on the details. “It was textbook,” said another.
Noting that Mr. Abu Khatalla had been under surveillance by American intelligence officials for months, the official added: “None of these kind of things are executed casually. There was a significant degree of planning.” The Washington Post first reported Mr. Abu Khattala’s arrest. The Post said it had learned of the operation on Monday but agreed to delay its story in response to a request from the White House citing security concerns.
Asked about the impact of removing Mr. Abu Khattala from the extremist ranks in eastern Libya, the official said, “He has clearly been a negative factor in Benghazi, and now there’s one less negative factor.” While the Delta Force soldiers provided the muscle, the raid was carried out under law enforcement authority, not as a military operation under the longstanding congressional authorization of force against Al Qaeda and its associated forces, according to administration officials.
Jay Carney, the White House spokesman, told reporters traveling with Mr. Obama to Pittsburgh that the capture of Mr. Abu Khattala was an important development, but he declined to describe the suspect as the mastermind of the Benghazi assault, specify where he was being held outside Libya or explain why it took so long to seize him. The extent of ties between Mr. Abu Khattala’s militia in Libya, Ansar al-Sharia, and Al Qaeda has been a matter of dispute. While the two groups share similar ideologies, the United States government does not believe them to be formally affiliated.
“More broadly, we have made it clear since that cowardly attack on our facilities that we would go to any lengths to find, apprehend and bring to justice those who perpetrated it and were responsible for the deaths of four Americans,” Mr. Carney said. “The capture of Abu Khattala is not the end of that effort, but it marks an important milestone.” The F.B.I. agents who participated in the operation were told to preserve any evidence and to ensure that the suspect was interrogated under criminal justice procedures. “This entire operation, from start to finish, was law enforcement,” one official said.
On the political impact of the capture, Mr. Carney said that “I really think this is entirely about the objective that we had as a country in the immediate aftermath and ever since, which is to bring those responsible to justice.” That does not mean that Mr. Abu Khattala was read a Miranda warning of his right to remain silent and have legal counsel. The Obama administration has adopted a policy of delaying that warning for extensive questioning of suspected operational terrorists.
Mr. Obama’s Republican critics, who have sought to portray the Benghazi attack as an administration cover-up and efforts to prosecute those responsible as weak, were cautious in their initial response to news of Mr. Abu Khattala’s capture. Mr. Abu Khattala faces charges of killing a person in the course of an armed attack on a federal facility, providing material support to terrorists and using a firearm in the commission of a violent crime. “We retain the option of adding additional charges in the coming days,” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said in a statement.
“It is obviously good news that this terrorist is now in American custody, and I am grateful for the work of our military — assisted by the F.B.I. — in capturing him,” Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio said in a statement. “I look forward to hearing more details regarding the raid, and I expect the administration to give our military professionals time to properly gather any useful intelligence he has.” Among those relieved by the capture was former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has been broadly criticized for her handling of the Benghazi attack.
Since the attack, which fell on the 11th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, Benghazi has become a fixture of angry political debate in Washington, in part because of the administration’s failure up to now to bring anyone responsible to account. “It took, as you know, 10 years to bring Osama bin Laden to justice,” she said on CNN during an event to promote her new book. “It’s taken more than two years to bring this perpetrator to justice.” But, she added, “Khattala has been very much on the minds of our law enforcement, our military and our intelligence professionals since that night in September of 2012.”
Republicans, not satisfied with the results of a series of earlier hearings and reports on the attack, including inquiries by three congressional committees, this year formed a House select committee to continue the investigation. Still, others cautioned about celebrating too soon, noting that Mr. Abu Khattala was just one person suspected in the mass attack on the diplomatic post in Benghazi. “I wouldn’t say we’ve broken the back by any stretch of the imagination,” Representative Mike Rogers of Michigan, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said on MSNBC.
They complain that the Obama administration misrepresented the genesis of the attack, playing down the role of Islamic extremism, in an election-year effort to defend the president’s claim to have reduced the threat from Al Qaeda. “This was an important activity to happen, to take someone like Khattala off the battlefield,” Mr. Rogers said. “It sends a very clear message in Libya that we haven’t gone away.” But, he added, “There’s over a dozen individuals of interest, I think, that the United States needs to gather up.”
Republicans’ attacks on Susan E. Rice, who was ambassador to the United Nations at the time, for portraying the attack as being a spontaneous reaction to an anti-Muslim video may well have cost her the opportunity to succeed Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state. Instead, Mr. Obama named Ms. Rice as his national security adviser, a post not requiring Senate confirmation.
A leading critic, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, late last year threatened to hold up every presidential appointment in the Senate until more questions were answered about Benghazi.
Democrats, in turn, point to the series of reports and inquiries to say that Ms. Rice had acted in good faith; that the security of the small mission in Benghazi had been appropriately handled by lower-level State Department officials; and that the United States had no military means to halt the attack once it was underway.
A commission led by Thomas R. Pickering, a respected diplomat, and Adm. Mike Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, found “systemic failures” and “management deficiencies” by State Department officials in protecting the Benghazi outpost, but uncovered no evidence of the sort of administration cover-up that some Republicans have alleged.
In her new book, “Hard Choices,” Mrs. Clinton writes of the attack that “I was the one ultimately responsible for my people’s safety, and I never felt that responsibility more deeply than I did that day.” But she adds, in reference to the unending Republican criticism, that “I will not be a part of a political slugfest on the backs of dead Americans.”