Benghazi defendant asks U.S. judge to send him back to Libya

The accused ringleader of the 2012 attack that killed four Americans at a U.S. diplomatic compound and CIA base in Benghazi, Libya, has asked a federal judge to dismiss terrorism charges against him and send him home.

In court papers filed Monday, lawyers for militia leader Ahmed Abu Khatallah claim U.S. military and Justice officials came up with an illegal ruse to secretly interrogate him for days on a Navy warship after he was captured by U.S. special forces in Libya in June 2014.

The lawyers contend Khatallah should have been flown to Washington, normally a 13-hour plane ride, to face terrorism charges in federal court.

Instead, they say, he was held aboard the New York, an amphibious transport dock, for 13 days where he was interrogated by CIA and counter-terrorism officials before he was advised of his legal rights and turned over to a separate team of FBI agents investigating the Benghazi attack.

The court papers say President Obama and other administration officials approved the lengthy sea transfer from Libya, even though it “deliberately and outrageously” violated federal law.

Libyan and U.S. officials have described Khatallah as the Benghazi leader of Ansar al-Sharia, which the State Department considers a terrorist organization. In an 18-count indictment, authorities say he devised and helped carry out armed attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi during the night of Sept. 11, 2012. He has pleaded not guilty.

The U.S. ambassador, J. Christopher Stevens, and a foreign service officer, Sean Smith, died during the raid on the U.S. diplomatic compound. Two contractors, Tyrone S. Woods and Glen Doherty, were killed in a subsequent armed attack on a CIA facility about a mile away.

In the court filings, defense lawyers urged U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Cooper to return Khatallah to Libya, which they said opposed his transfer to the United States. They said he was charged in a sealed criminal complaint on July 15, 2013, but not seized by U.S. authorities until a year later.

“In the interim,” they said, “the government conceived and executed a deliberate plan to capture Mr. Abu Khatallah and transport him to the United States in a manner intended to facilitate the government’s prosecution while violating not only Mr. Abu Khatallah’s fundamental rights, but also domestic and international law.”

Defense lawyers said U.S. government agencies, including Justice, Defense and the CIA, had developed the arrest and transfer plan. “Thus, the violations of law at issue here were not committed by a few rogue agents of the government, but by the executive branch as a whole,” they wrote.

They said Khatallah was transferred by ship “in order to allow investigators the maximum amount of time to question him.”

They said the New York sailed “at the slowest possible speed in order to extend the time within which the investigators could interrogate him without a lawyer.”

And they said he was not turned over to the FBI and read his Miranda rights against self-incrimination until five days after he was put aboard.

Government prosecutors have not yet responded to the defense allegations.

Twitter: @RickSerranoLAT

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