Suspected leader of Benghazi embassy attack captured

WASHINGTON (AP) — The capture of an alleged leader of the deadly 2012 attacks on Americans in Benghazi, Libya,gives U.S. officials

a rare moment of good news. Now they are preparing to try the captured Libyan in the U.S. court system and pledging to redouble efforts to catch others responsible for the attacks.

U.S. officials said Ahmed Abu Khattala was being held on a Navy ship in the Mediterranean Sea. The officials spoke only on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the Libyan's whereabouts publicly by name.

Abu Khattala was headed to the U.S. to face what President Barack Obama called "the full weight of the American justice system."

On Capitol Hill, Republicans urged the administration to get as much intelligence out of Abu Khattala as possible before anyone reads him his rights to remain silent, supplies him with a lawyer and prepares him for trial in a U.S. courtroom. In fact, Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, top Republican on the Intelligence Committee, said interrogation of the Libyan already was underway and "we hope to find out some positive things."

Abu Khattala is charged with terror-related crimes in U.S. District Court in Washington and will be tried like a civilian, the administration said. The Obama administration policy is to treat terror suspects as criminals when possible and not send them to the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, like hundreds of terror suspects captured during the administration of President George W. Bush.

Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said the U.S. should skip the legal niceties and focus on interrogation.

"The most valuable thing we can get from this terrorist is information about who else was involved in this," McConnell told reporters. "We'll be watching closely to see how much information they glean from him and how they're handling it."

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., added: "We should have some quality time with this guy — weeks and months. Don't torture him; have some quality time with him."

Justice Department spokesman Marc Raimondi declined to comment on whether Abu Khatalla had been read his "Miranda rights" or when that might happen.

"As a general rule, the government will always seek to elicit all actionable intelligence and information we can from terrorist suspects in our custody," Raimondi said in an email.

The Sept. 11, 2012, attack in Benghazi, on the 11th anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks, killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. Stevens was the first U.S. ambassador to be killed in the line of duty in more than 30 years. In the immediate aftermath, political reaction formed along sharply drawn lines that hold fast to this day.