Thirteen days in the history of the accused leader of the Benghazi attacks

Under a nearly full moon, a small boat pulled away from the Libyan coastline.

A bearded man sat on board, masked, handcuffed and gagged until out of shouting range of land. After 20 minutes, armed guards lowered him into a shallow pit in the deck of a second vessel to guard against his falling overboard on the final choppy, 100-minute sprint to their destination: a U.S. warship waiting in the Mediterranean Sea.

There, Ahmed Abu Khattala began a 13-day trip crossing the Atlantic Ocean that would end in a U.S. courtroom.

The suspected ringleader of the Benghazi terrorist attacks was taken to a specially constructed brig aboard the USS New York on June 16, 2014, at 4:19 a.m. Libya time, according to the log for the ship’s detention center.

Interrogations began four minutes later, at 4:23 a.m.

The events surrounding the capture of Abu Khattala, accused as the mastermind of the lethal attacks in Benghazi that killed a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans, are emerging with rare detail in testimony and records in an ongoing federal court case in Washington.

Read the whole story from The Washington Post.

Featured image courtesy of US Attorney’s Office District of Columbia.