Zubayr al-Bakoush, an accused member of the Islamist extremist group Ansar Al-Sharia, pleaded not guilty Thursday in a Washington federal courtroom to eight charges stemming from the 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya — the assault that killed four Americans, including a U.S. ambassador.
Al-Bakoush shuffled to his seat with the aid of a walker, wearing an orange jumpsuit, and nodded along as a translator relayed the proceedings. His defense attorney, Jessica Carmichael, entered the plea on his behalf. The arrest marked the first in nearly nine years tied to the Benghazi attack.
Three of the eight charges carry a maximum penalty of death.
According to The Hill, the attacks of September 11 and 12, 2012, killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens, State Department information management officer Sean Smith, and Navy SEALs and CIA security contractors Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty. Others were seriously injured, including State Department Special Agent Scott Wickland, who is named in an attempted killing charge against al-Bakoush.
Attorney General Pam Bondi, who announced the charges last week, described al-Bakoush as:
"One of the key participants" behind the attack.
She added:
"We have never stopped seeking justice for that crime against our nation."
FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed that al-Bakoush was apprehended "overseas," although no details about the country or the circumstances of the arrest were provided. He was extradited to the U.S. last week, and a federal magistrate judge granted the government's request for temporary detention.
Al-Bakoush was first charged in a 2015 complaint — one that sat sealed for eleven years. A federal grand jury indicted him in November, and those charging papers were unsealed Friday. The gap between the original sealed complaint and the courtroom appearance tells its own story about the grinding, deliberate pace of counterterrorism prosecutions — and the question of why it took this long to bring him into custody.
Both the prosecution and defense agreed that the case is complex and asked U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper to designate it as such, which allows a longer pre-trial timeline. The next status hearing is set for June 4.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael DiLorenzo acknowledged the open question hanging over the case — whether the Justice Department will seek the death penalty. He told the court:
"It's hard to speak to" a timeline on when that decision would come, but the government would seek to move as "quickly as possible."
Carmichael, for her part, offered the expected defense posture, telling the judge that al-Bakoush:
"Does, of course, contest a number of factual allegations" against him.
Al-Bakoush is the third person to face federal prosecution for the Benghazi attacks, and his case lands in front of a judge with direct experience in this saga. Judge Cooper also oversaw the case of Ahmed Abu Khatallah, the Libyan militia leader prosecutors portrayed as the mastermind. Khatallah was convicted of four counts in 2017 and initially sentenced to 22 years — a term a judge later deemed "unreasonably low," resentencing him to 28 years in 2024. Khatallah is named as a co-conspirator of al-Bakoush in the indictment.
Another Libyan national, Mustafa al-Imam, was captured in 2017 and sentenced in 2020 to more than 19 years for his role in the assault.
Twenty-two years. Twenty-eight years. Nineteen years. For an attack that killed an American ambassador, two Navy SEALs, and a State Department officer. For an act of war against sovereign U.S. territory on the anniversary of September 11th. The sentences have been, to put it charitably, modest relative to the magnitude of the crime.
That three of al-Bakoush's charges carry a potential death sentence raises the stakes in a case the government clearly wants to treat with the gravity Benghazi deserves.
Benghazi became a political word long before it became a legal one. For years, the left treated any mention of it as partisan overreach — a Republican obsession, a talking point, anything but what it actually was: a catastrophic security failure that left Americans dead and an accountability vacuum that took more than a decade to even partially fill.
The political class moved on. The families of Stevens, Smith, Woods, and Doherty did not get that luxury.
Al-Bakoush's extradition and arraignment don't close the book. But they send a signal that the current Justice Department intends to pursue these cases with the seriousness they demand — not as legacy cleanup, but as unfinished business that belongs at the front of the line.
When Judge Cooper joked that al-Bakoush was "stuck with" him for the duration, the defendant responded quietly through his translator.
"OK."
Four American families have been stuck with something far heavier for thirteen years. The least the justice system can deliver now is a prosecution that matches the weight of what was taken from them.