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.