After 7-week trial, Benghazi jury weighs $7 million informant, surveillance video and phone traces

Source: The Washington Post




By Spencer S. Hsu November 20 at 6:00 AM

Ahmed Abu Khattala’s militia hit men formed “the tip of the spear” in 2012 attacks that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans at U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya, prosecutors said at the end of a seven-week terrorism trial.

Assistant Federal Public Defender Michelle Peterson countered that the government played to emotions of jurors in Washington, accusing her client of “hating America” to try to divert them from holes in the prosecution.

A federal jury of 12, all residents of the nation’s capital, is set to begin deliberations Monday over the fate of the man charged with helping orchestrate attacks that stretched from the night of Sept. 11, 2012, until nearly dawn the next day at a U.S. diplomatic mission and nearby CIA base.

The trial tested the ability of the civilian courts — rather than military commissions — to prosecute foreign terrorism suspects captured overseas and interrogated in a two-step system in which one team of questioners extracts useful intelligence and is followed by a separate FBI team that collects evidence for trial under legal safeguards for a defendant.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/after-7-week-trial-benghazi-jury-weighs-7-million-informant-surveillance-video-and-phone-traces/2017/11/19/1f45461a-ca37-11e7-aa96-54417592cf72_story.html