A Libyan man convicted of conspiracy in the 2012 attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi that killed a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans was sentenced to 19½ years in prison Thursday by a federal judge in Washington.
A jury in June convicted Mustafa al-Imam, 47, of one count each of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists and maliciously destroying government property in the overnight attacks that began Sept. 11, 2012, on a U.S. diplomatic mission and nearby CIA post.
Prosecutors declined to retry Imam on 15 other counts that jurors hung on, including murder in the death of J. Christopher Stevens, the first U.S. ambassador killed on duty in nearly 40 years.
As with militia leader Ahmed Abu Khattala, convicted and sentenced in 2018 to 22 years in prison as one of the attacks’ ringleaders, prosecutors argued that although jurors did not convict Imam of murder, a judge could consider the deaths at sentencing if they were a “reasonably foreseeable” consequence of the conspiracy.
U.S. District Judge Christopher R. “Casey” Cooper, who tried both cases, agreed with prosecutors. He found Imam acted as Abu Khattala’s “eyes and ears” in an attack calculated to result in deaths.
“The United States has military bases, diplomatic embassies and other facilities all over the world . . . [with personnel] who are very exposed, and very vulnerable to targeting, as recent events have shown,” Cooper said, alluding to Iran’s Jan. 8 missile strikes against military bases in Iraq and the breach of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/libyan-man-sentenced-to-1912-years-in-benghazi-attacks-that-killed-us-ambassador/2020/01/23/4c7b64d4-3d58-11ea-baca-eb7ace0a3455_story.html?outputType=amp