Nearly fourteen years after armed assailants stormed the U.S. Special Mission in Benghazi and killed four Americans, the FBI has finally arrested one of the alleged leaders of that attack. Zubayr Al-Bakoush landed in Virginia early Friday to face federal charges, including murder, terror, and arson — all stemming from the September 11, 2012, assault that became a defining failure of the Obama administration.
Attorney General Pam Bondi announced the charges. An eight-count indictment awaits Al-Bakoush, Fox News reported. And Jeanine Pirro, now serving as U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C., made clear this is only the beginning.
Pirro delivered remarks at the Department of Justice on February 6, the same day the arrest was announced. She did not mince words about the years of inaction that preceded this moment:
"The American cavalry never came, to our disappointment, in 2012."
That single line carries the weight of over a decade of frustration — for the families of the fallen, for the Americans who watched the disaster unfold in real time, and for everyone who wondered why the most powerful nation on earth couldn't hold anyone accountable for a coordinated terrorist attack on its own compound.
Appearing Sunday on "Fox & Friends Weekend," Pirro sharpened the message into something closer to a warning:
"We're coming for you now. We've got him. We've got a lot more coming."
That's not bluster from a cable news commentator. That's the U.S. Attorney for the nation's capital, backed by the full weight of the Justice Department, announcing a posture of pursuit. The difference between rhetoric and action is an extradited suspect sitting in a Virginia holding facility. Al-Bakoush is the action.
On September 11, 2012, a group of assailants armed with AK-47 rifles, grenades, and other weapons stormed the U.S. Special Mission compound in Benghazi. They shot, set fires, and broke into buildings. Four Americans died.
What followed was not a reckoning. It was a cover-up.
Pirro didn't let the historical record stay buried. She went directly at the prior administration's handling — and mishandling — of the attack and its aftermath:
"The president said we did everything we could. They didn't do everything they could. Americans watched in horror as four Americans are being killed, not by peaceful protests that went awry."
That last phrase is the key. The Obama administration's initial public narrative — that the Benghazi attack grew out of a spontaneous protest over an internet video — was a lie told to the American people and repeated on Sunday morning talk shows. Pirro said as much, stating the administration knew the attack was a coordinated assault, not a protest. She questioned why F-16s weren't flown overhead, why a rapid response team, she said, could have arrived in hours, was never dispatched.
Whether those specific military options were viable is a debate that has raged for years. What is not debatable is the result: four dead Americans and, for more than a decade, no meaningful accountability for the attackers.
Pirro connected those dots explicitly:
"Benghazi was the most dangerous place on earth for Americans, and they put them there without protection. And they lied to us on the Sunday morning talk shows. They lied to us in Congress... It was only through President Trump that we're now going to get some kind of justice."
Consider the timeline. The attack happened in 2012. The arrest happened in 2026. That's fourteen years during which the architects of a terror attack against Americans walked free — not because they were ghosts, but because bringing them to justice simply wasn't treated as a priority.
The Obama administration treated Benghazi as a political problem to be managed, not a national security failure to be avenged. The talking points mattered more than the terrorists. Congressional hearings produced heat but little operational follow-through. The families buried their dead and waited.
Now, an alleged leader of the attack sits in federal custody facing an eight-count indictment. The machinery of American justice, when it chooses to move, moves with force. The question that should haunt every official who slow-walked this for over a decade is simple: what took so long?
Pirro's language — "we've got a lot more coming" — suggests Al-Bakoush's arrest is the opening move, not the final one. If the Justice Department is pursuing additional suspects tied to the Benghazi attack, this could become the most significant counterterrorism accountability effort in years.
The charges alone signal seriousness. Murder. Terror. Arson. These aren't plea-bargain charges designed to secure a quiet conviction. They're the kind of charges you bring when you intend to make an example — and when you have the evidence to back it up.
For fourteen years, the Benghazi attack existed in American political life as a symbol of failure, of cover-ups, of unanswered questions. Symbols don't convict anyone. Indictments do.
Four Americans died in Benghazi. Their names were never forgotten by the people who loved them. Now, finally, the government that failed to protect them has decided to pursue the men who killed them.
The cavalry arrived late. But it arrived.