Khattala appealed his convictions, saying the proof was flawed, the decision inconsistent and the prosecutor’s closing argument prejudicial. The panel of appellate judges dismissed these claims, as an alternative discovering that Khattala — referred to in court docket filings as Khatallah — was rightly discovered responsible and that his 22-year jail sentence was “shockingly low and unsupportable.”
The truth that Khattala, 51, was acquitted of probably the most critical fees in opposition to him didn’t advantage such a departure from federal tips recommending 30 years to life, the unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Courtroom of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit stated.
“These considering assaults on america, its official properties, and (most significantly) its personnel should know they may face extreme penalties if apprehended and convicted,” the court docket wrote. “Their leaders much more so.”
Khattala, who was captured by U.S. Special Forces in 2014, was the primary particular person convicted within the assaults. A detailed ally, Mustafa al-Imam, was subsequently convicted of comparable fees and sentenced to 19½ years in jail.
The court docket agreed with Khattala that an assistant U.S. legal professional gave a closing argument that was “plainly improper and unbefitting a federal prosecutor” by personalizing the crime as “attacking us” and “ours” whereas denigrating agreed-upon descriptions of categorised proof as unreliable “phrases on a chunk of paper.” The federal government known as the remarks “a small fraction of a prolonged trial,” with out arguing their propriety.
“We count on higher from an legal professional representing america,” the appellate court docket stated. However the judges stated that the “misconduct” didn’t advantage a brand new trial provided that “on the costs for which he was convicted, the case in opposition to Khatallah was not shut.”
Khattala was filmed getting into a constructing on the U.S. compound, armed with an AK-47 rifle simply earlier than midnight on Sept. 11, 2021 — about two hours after the preliminary assault and half an hour earlier than militants gained entry to the adjoining CIA facility. When he exited, he was seen gesturing for others to observe him. Armed males linked to Khattala and his militia had been seen pouring gasoline, setting fires and getting into buildings on the mission grounds. Telephone information present he was in contact with a few of them earlier than, throughout and after the assault. He admitted to the FBI that he was on the scene after the breach.
When he sentenced Khattala in 2018, Choose Christopher R. Cooper stated he was “considerably reluctantly” concluding that the militant was discovered responsible of “basically a property crime.” Jurors, he stated, had rejected proof that Khattala was concerned in both the fireplace on the mission’s fundamental residential facility, the place Stevens and State Division International Service officer Sean Smith died of smoke inhalation, or the later assault on an adjoining CIA facility the place safety officers Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty had been killed by mortar hearth.
Three Libyan witnesses testified that Khattala’s function was extra intensive, together with stockpiling weapons, mortar rounds and a shoulder-launched missile, and in search of armored autos upfront of an assault he supposed to lead to American deaths. However a juror stated in an interview with The Washington Put up after the trial that this testimony was undermined by the cooperators’ antipathy towards Khattala and hundreds of thousands in cost from america for his or her assist.
To think about conduct on which Khattala was acquitted, Cooper discovered, would inform the jurors “that I actually didn’t imply what I informed them in regards to the significance and the sanctity of jury service.”
The appeals court docket stated that whereas Cooper “retains the discretion to fluctuate upward or downward” from sentencing tips, together with “to low cost acquitted conduct,” the choose “abused [his] discretion” by “imposing a sentence each decrease than the minimal that will be acceptable in gentle of the jury’s acquittals and much decrease than may very well be justified on this document.”
