WASHINGTON — For years, the U.S. attorney’s office here has watched as authorities in New York and Virginia handled many of the nation’s biggest terrorism cases — even ones in which the District of Columbia was the target of planned attacks.
With the capture of Ahmed Abu Khattala — a suspected ringleader in the assault on U.S. outposts in Benghazi, Libya, in which four Americans were killed — U.S. Attorney Ronald Machen Jr. and other attorneys are poised to handle one of the most important American terrorism cases in recent memory.
Abu Khattala, currently being interrogated aboard a American warship, is expected to be brought to the U.S. and arraigned in Washington in the days ahead.
The case will mark a critical challenge for an office that has comparatively less experience in prosecuting high-profile terrorism cases.
The Benghazi case “is an opportunity for the U.S. attorney’s office in D.C. to demonstrate its prowess in handling a high-profile, sensitive terrorism prosecution,” said David Laufman, a former assistant U.S. attorney who handled national-security cases at the Justice Department.
Officials in the U.S. attorney’s office here said in interviews that, over the past three years, Machen and his prosecutors have filed more cases against terrorism suspects than any of their counterparts nationwide — even if many of those cases remain sealed.
“When we have the facts, we go aggressively after the case,” said Gregg Maisel, chief of the national security section in Machen’s office.
Karen Greenberg, who directs Fordham Law School’s Center on National Security and who has tracked terrorism prosecutions, said the “train left the station a long time ago about which offices were going to be important in terrorism: Manhattan and Brooklyn and northern Virginia. This will be a major test of the federal prosecutors.”
For the highest-profile cases, including terrorism cases, senior Justice Department officials frequently become involved in choosing the venue, considering factors such as the experience of the prosecutors, the reputation of the judges and the potential juries in each district.
“All cases can be brought in D.C., usually by the statutes or where the person first lands. So D.C. is in some ways a natural place to bring these cases,” Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. said in a recent interview with The Washington Post.
