Zubayr Al-Bakoush — described as one of the architects of the 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya — touched down at Andrews Air Force Base at 3 a.m. Friday in American custody. He will face prosecution on charges of arson, murder, attempted murder, and terrorism in a DC federal court.
The New York Post reported that an eight-count indictment, filed in November 2025 and unsealed Friday afternoon, charges him with conspiring to provide and actually providing material support to terrorists, including himself, and using those resources to kill U.S. officials, injure others, and set fire to buildings.
He is the third Islamic extremist arrested in connection with the Benghazi assault. Fourteen years after four Americans were killed on sovereign U.S. soil in Libya, one of the men who allegedly led the attack now sits in a federal holding facility.
Attorney General Pam Bondi announced the arrest at DOJ headquarters Friday alongside FBI Director Kash Patel and DC U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro — both of whom had been on the tarmac at Andrews in the early morning hours to receive the prisoner personally.
"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 vowed prosecution "to the fullest extent of the law." She did not mince words about why it mattered.
Bondi drove straight at one of the most infamous moments in the Benghazi saga — former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's dismissive response during a 2013 congressional hearing, when Sen. Ron Johnson pressed her on the failures that led to the attack.
"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."
That line landed in a room that understood its weight. Clinton's remark became shorthand for an entire governing philosophy — one that treated accountability as an inconvenience and the deaths of Americans abroad as a political problem to be managed rather than a crime to be avenged. For more than a decade, it served as a kind of permission structure: if the people at the top didn't care, why should the bureaucracy beneath them?
Bondi's message on Friday was the opposite.
"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."
The 13-page indictment lays out the timeline of an attack that unfolded over hours, hours during which help never arrived.
According to the indictment, Al-Bakoush and others violently breached the Mission's gate around 9:45 p.m. on September 11, 2012, and set fire to its buildings, including a villa housing Ambassador Chris Stevens, State Department information management officer Sean Smith, and diplomatic security agent Scott Wickland. Stevens and Smith died trapped inside the compound. Wickland survived.
Roughly half an hour after the initial breach, the attackers retreated and began firing on the complex with handguns, AK-47 assault rifles, and rocket-propelled grenades. They re-entered the Mission around 11:45 p.m. In the early morning hours of September 12, they turned mortars on the nearby CIA annex, killing CIA contractors Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods and seriously injuring State Department Assistant Regional Officer David Ubben and CIA facility security officer Mark Geist.
The indictment identifies Al-Bakoush and 19 co-conspirators who also allegedly intended to plunder property from the Mission, including documents, maps, and computers containing sensitive information. A confidential federal informant described Al-Bakoush in January 2020 court filings as one of "two key leaders of the Mission attack."
Four Americans are dead. A diplomatic compound in ashes. Classified materials looted. And for 13 hours, the people inside waited for a rescue that never came.
DC U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro framed the arrest against the original failure — not just of security, but of will.
"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."
A select House committee investigation found that Obama administration officials failed to deploy military assets to Libya despite intelligence warnings of growing danger to American interests. Instead of confronting that failure, the administration constructed a cover story. Five days after the attack, then-UN Ambassador Susan Rice went on national television and attributed the violence to a spontaneous reaction to an internet video.
"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."
No diplomatic security agents in Benghazi attributed the attack to a video or a protest. It was a coordinated assault carried out by members of the Al Qaeda-linked group Ansar Al Sharia, armed with rifles, RPGs, and mortars. The video narrative was a fabrication — not a misunderstanding, not a premature assessment, but a deliberate choice to mislead the American public weeks before a presidential election.
That context matters now because it explains why accountability took 14 years. When the priority is political survival rather than justice, investigations stall, leads go cold, and terrorists walk free.
Al-Bakoush is the third suspect brought to account. Ahmed Abu Khatallah, described as the attack's leader, was arrested in Libya in June 2014 and initially sentenced in June 2018 to 22 years in prison — a sentence a federal appeals panel called "unreasonably low." He was resentenced in September 2024 to 28 years during the Biden administration. Mustafa al-Imam was captured by U.S. special forces in October 2017 and sentenced in January 2020 to 19 years and eight months.
Two convictions in over a decade. Twenty co-conspirators were named in the indictment. Pirro made clear the work isn't finished.
"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 said her team "will not stop" hunting down other attackers who remain at large, and that she and Patel had kept in touch with family members of the four Americans killed.
FBI Director Kash Patel, who noted he worked on the Benghazi case as a young prosecutor, was on the airfield for the formal foreign transfer of custody.
"When an act of terrorism of this magnitude strikes at the heart of our nation, we go to work."
"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 declined to disclose where Al-Bakoush was apprehended, citing the need to protect the integrity of the investigation. The operation involved the FBI's New York Field Office, the DOJ's National Security Division Counterterrorism Section, the Department of War, the State Department, and the CIA.
A CIA spokesperson said Director Ratcliffe was "deeply grateful" for the efforts of the DOJ and the FBI:
"CIA and the Nation will never forget the extraordinary sacrifices of Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, who gave their lives in defense of others and exemplified the very best of our Agency."
There is a reason Benghazi never faded from public memory the way the political class wanted it to. It wasn't partisanship. It wasn't a talking point. It was the image of Americans abandoned by their own government — fighting through the night on a rooftop in a hostile country while Washington deliberated and then lied about what happened.
Chris Stevens. Sean Smith. Glen Doherty. Tyrone Woods. They deserved better from the people who sent them there, and they deserved better from the people who spent years deflecting blame rather than hunting down the men who killed them.
Pirro put it plainly:
"President Trump will make sure that the cavalry comes for Americans, no matter where they are in this world."
Fourteen years late, the cavalry arrived at Andrews Air Force Base at 3 a.m. with a prisoner in tow. That's what difference it makes.
