Zubayr Al-Bakoush, described as one of the architects of the deadly 2012 assault on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya, landed at Andrews Air Force Base at 3 a.m. Friday morning. He is now in American custody and will face arson, killing-related charges, and terrorism charges. FBI Director Kash Patel and DC US Attorney Jeanine Pirro were on the tarmac to receive him.
Fourteen years after Islamic militants stormed a US diplomatic compound, set it ablaze, and launched mortars at a nearby CIA facility — killing four Americans — one of the men believed to have orchestrated the carnage will finally stand in an American courtroom.
Attorney General Pam Bondi announced the arrest to reporters at DOJ headquarters Friday morning:
Zubayr Al-Bakoush landed at Andrews Air Force Base at 3 a.m. this morning. He is in our custody. He was greeted by Director Patel and US Attorney Jeanine Pirro.
Bondi added that prosecutors "will prosecute this alleged terrorist to the fullest extent of the law."
On September 11, 2012, Islamic militants stormed the US diplomatic compound in Benghazi. US Ambassador Chris Stevens and State Department official Sean Smith died trapped inside the burning complex, the New York Post reported. CIA contractors Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods were killed defending the compound. Four Americans — serving their country in one of the most dangerous corners of the world — were gone.
For 13 hours, according to Pirro, they waited for help that never arrived.
An American ambassador, elite military personnel and a State Department employee were all violently murdered. The American cavalry never came. For 13 hours, they waited for help that never came.
That sentence should weigh on every official who had the authority to act and chose not to. A select House committee investigation, released roughly five years after the attack, found that Obama administration officials failed to deploy military assets to Libya. The same investigation found that no diplomatic security agents on the ground in Benghazi attributed the attack to an internet video or a protest.
Which made what came next all the more galling.
Five days after the attack, then-UN Ambassador Susan Rice went on television and offered this explanation:
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.
Nobody on the ground in Benghazi believed that. The investigation confirmed it. But the narrative served its purpose — it deflected blame from policy failures and insulated an administration weeks from a presidential election.
Then came the congressional hearing. Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin pressed then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the failures that led to the deaths of four Americans. Clinton's response entered the permanent record of Washington's most callous moments:
What difference, at this point, does it make?
Bondi answered that question on Friday.
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.
And 14 years later, it makes a difference to law enforcement.
FBI Director Kash Patel told reporters he worked on the Benghazi case as a young prosecutor and called the arrest a moment that brought the episode "full circle." He described being at the airfield early Friday morning for the formal foreign transfer of custody:
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. And her office and the Department of Justice are going to execute justice for the fallen.
Patel framed the arrest as an expression of institutional resolve:
When an act of terrorism of this magnitude strikes at the heart of our nation, we go to work.
This is not the first Benghazi suspect to face American justice. Mustafa al-Imam, another militant suspected of involvement in the attack, was captured by US special forces in Libya in October 2017. He was later convicted of federal terrorism charges and sentenced to 19 years and eight months in prison. But Al-Bakoush is described as something more — one of the architects of the operation itself.
Pirro made clear Friday that Al-Bakoush's arrest is not the final chapter. She and her team, she said, "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.
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 and Patel have both kept in touch with the family members of the four Americans killed in the attack. That detail matters. Bureaucracies forget. Administrations change. The families of Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Glen Doherty, and Tyrone Woods do not have the luxury of moving on. Someone in government remembering their names — and acting on their behalf — is not a small thing.
For years, Benghazi occupied a strange space in American politics. The left treated it as a manufactured controversy, a Republican obsession unworthy of serious attention. Clinton's "what difference does it make" line became a punchline in some circles — proof, supposedly, that conservatives were overreacting. The Obama administration's deflection to a YouTube video was memory-holed by allies happy to comply.
But four men are still dead. Their families still grieve. And someone still needed to answer for it.
Bondi closed with a warning directed far beyond this single case:
Let this case serve as a reminder. 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.
And Pirro drove the point to its sharpest edge:
President Trump will make sure that the cavalry comes for Americans, no matter where they are in this world.
Fourteen years ago, the cavalry never came for Benghazi. On Friday, at 3 a.m., it arrived at Andrews Air Force Base — with a prisoner in tow and a prosecution ready to begin. The difference it makes is the difference between a government that shrugs and one that hunts.
