More than 13 years after militants stormed the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, and killed four U.S. citizens, federal authorities have brought a third suspect to American soil to stand trial.

Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Friday that Zubayar al-Bakoush, a 58-year-old Libyan national, arrived at an airfield in Virginia just after 3 a.m. and is now in federal custody. He faces an eight-count indictment that had been sealed since 2015 — kept under wraps for more than a decade as investigators worked to locate and apprehend him. The charges include murder, attempted murder, arson, and conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists resulting in death.

It is the first arrest connected to the Benghazi attack in nearly nine years.

FBI Director Kash Patel, standing alongside Bondi and U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro at a Department of Justice press conference, offered almost nothing about the circumstances of the capture. He called it a "foreign transfer of custody," said it happened "overseas," and left it there. Both he and Bondi deflected questions about whether any foreign government played a role.

"We have never stopped seeking justice for that crime against our nation," Bondi said.

Pirro, whose office in the District of Columbia will prosecute the case, said she personally notified the families of the victims after al-Bakoush was taken into custody. She told reporters the investigation is not over. "Let me be very clear — there are more of them out there," she said. "Time will not stop us from going after these predators, no matter how long it takes."

What happened on September 11, 2012

The attack unfolded over roughly eight hours across two locations in Benghazi — the U.S. Special Mission compound and a nearby CIA annex — and left Ambassador Christopher Stevens, State Department information officer Sean Smith, and CIA security contractors Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty dead.

According to the unsealed indictment, al-Bakoush was a member of Ansar al-Sharia, an Islamist extremist militia whose goal was the establishment of Sharia law in Libya. On the evening of September 11, more than 20 armed men carrying assault rifles and explosive devices gathered outside the mission's main gate. They breached it at approximately 9:45 p.m.

The attackers spread through the compound setting fires. When they failed to enter the secure area of Villa C — the ambassador's residence — they set the building ablaze. Stevens and Smith suffocated in the smoke. A Diplomatic Security Service agent who tried to lead them to safety was injured and took repeated small-arms fire in the process.

The indictment places al-Bakoush inside the compound around 10 p.m., conducting surveillance and attempting to break into vehicles belonging to mission staff. After a brief withdrawal, the group returned for a second assault shortly after 11 p.m., this time with AK-pattern rifles, grenades, and rocket-propelled grenades. They ransacked the mission's offices, making off with documents, maps, and computers that contained the location of the CIA annex.

The violence followed them there. In the early hours of September 12, militants hit the annex with gunfire and a precision mortar strike that killed Woods and Doherty and seriously wounded two others.

Al-Bakoush is charged specifically with the murders of Stevens and Smith and the attempted murder of the DSS agent. He is not charged in the deaths of Woods and Doherty.

First appearance in federal court

Al-Bakoush appeared Friday afternoon before U.S. Magistrate Judge Moxila Upadhyaya in Washington. He was wheeled into the courtroom in a gray sweatsuit, head down, eyes barely open. A stand-in attorney sat beside him. A permanent defense counsel has not yet been assigned.

He did not enter a plea. When sworn in through a remote interpreter, he told the court, "I have complete trust in the court and the jury. They will not be unjust."

Prosecutors said they will seek pretrial detention. A hearing on that question is expected next week.

The long trail of prosecutions

Al-Bakoush is the third person brought before a U.S. court over the Benghazi attack, and the first since 2017.

Ahmed Abu Khatallah, described by prosecutors as the leader of the assault, was captured by U.S. special forces inside Libya in 2014. A jury convicted him on terrorism-related charges but acquitted him of murder. He was initially sentenced to 22 years and resentenced in September 2024 to 28. His defense argued the evidence was inconclusive and that he had been targeted for his religious beliefs.

Mustafa al-Imam was apprehended in 2017 and convicted two years later. He received a sentence of nearly 20 years. His lawyers contended he had been suffering from mental trauma and seasickness when he agreed to speak with American officials aboard a U.S. Navy vessel following his capture.

A fourth suspect, Ali Awni al-Harzi, never made it to a courtroom. He was killed in a U.S. airstrike in Iraq in 2015.

The Justice Department filed sealed complaints against roughly a dozen militants believed to have been involved in the attack by late 2013. How many remain at large — and where — is not something officials addressed Friday.

Benghazi's long political shadow

The attack has carried extraordinary political weight since the night it happened. In its aftermath, congressional Republicans launched a series of investigations that put intense scrutiny on then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, questioning the security posture at the Benghazi compound, the military's response to the assault, and the Obama administration's evolving account of who carried it out and why.

A final report from a Republican-led congressional panel found security deficiencies at the outpost and faulted the administration for a slow response, but did not establish personal wrongdoing by Clinton. She dismissed the findings as a rehash of prior probes and said it was "time to move on." Democrats on the committee called the Republicans' report "a conspiracy theory on steroids."

The deeper backdrop is Libya itself. The attack occurred barely a year after the NATO-backed overthrow and killing of longtime leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, which plunged the country into a state of fractured governance it has never recovered from. Some of the armed factions that rose in the vacuum turned against the same Western powers that had supported the campaign to topple the old regime. Declassified intelligence records have since shown the CIA was running covert operations out of Libya at the time of the attack, including efforts to move weapons to Syrian opposition forces — a thread that has never been fully accounted for in public.

Libya today remains split between two rival governments, one based in Tripoli and recognized by the United Nations, the other run by Khalifa Haftar's Libyan National Army in the east. The confirmed killing days ago of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi — the former leader's most prominent son, who had recently returned to political life — is only the latest reminder of how unstable the country remains.

Against that backdrop, al-Bakoush's prosecution reopens a case that much of Washington had treated as settled history. Whether the trial produces new disclosures about the attack, or the covert activities surrounding it, is an open question. What is clear is that after more than 13 years, the investigation has not run its course.