A 22-year prison term isn’t enough for a terrorist convicted for his role in the deadly attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, a decade ago, a federal appeals court ruled.
The Sept. 11, 2012, assault on the U.S. intelligence and diplomatic facilities led to the deaths of foreign service officer Sean Patrick Smith, security officers Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, and Ambassador Christopher Stevens. This was the first time in 40 years that a sitting U.S. ambassador had been killed in the line of duty.
The defendant, Ahmed Abu Khatallah, 51, was captured by U.S. forces in 2014. Khatallah is also known by several aliases, among them Ahmed Salimfaraj Abukhatallah. Khatallah was the leader of Ubaydah Bin Jarrah, an Islamist militia operating in the Benghazi area. Evidence linked the militia to Ansar al-Sharia, an organization affiliated with the terrorist group Al-Qaeda, which was founded by the late Osama bin Laden and carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that brought down the World Trade Center, a commercial airliner in Pennsylvania, and inflicted heavy damage on the Pentagon, killing almost 3,000 people in the three locations….