Libyan militia leader Ahmed Abu Khattala, ruling that the punishment was “unreasonably lenient” and ordering a federal district court in Washington, DC, to resentence him.
The decision was issued on Friday by the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which concluded that the sentence failed to reflect the seriousness of Abu Khattala’s terrorism convictions stemming from the 2012 attack on the US diplomatic facilities in Benghazi.
Abu Khattala was convicted in 2017 on multiple terrorism-related charges connected to the attack that killed US Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. However, a federal jury acquitted him of murder charges during the trial.
The appeals panel, composed of Judges Karen LeCraft Henderson, J. Michelle Childs, and Florence Pan, ruled that the 28-year sentence imposed in 2024 by US District Judge Christopher Cooper remained excessively lenient despite a previous appeal that had already led to a harsher sentence than originally imposed.
In its decision, the court stated that Abu Khattala played a central role in planning and carrying out the assault on the US diplomatic compound in Benghazi. The judges also cited findings that he pressured a Libyan security force not to patrol the area surrounding the diplomatic mission on the night of the attack. According to the ruling, Abu Khattala also expressed regret only that the attackers had not killed all the Americans present at the compound.
This marks the second time the appeals court has rejected Abu Khattala’s sentence. In 2018, he was sentenced to 22 years in prison, but that sentence was overturned after the appeals court described it as “shockingly low” given the severity of the offenses. Following that decision, the district court increased the sentence to 28 years in 2024, a punishment the appeals court has now ruled remains insufficient.
Abu Khattala was captured by US special forces during a raid in Libya in 2014 and transferred to the United States to stand trial. The latest ruling sends the case back to the federal district court in Washington, where a judge will impose a new sentence in line with the appeals court’s findings.
