WASHINGTON — One of the architects of the deadly 2012 attack on the US mission in Benghazi, Libya, has been arrested and will be prosecuted on arson, murder, attempted murder and terrorism charges, Justice Department officials announced Friday.

“Zubayr Al-Bakoush landed at Andrews Air Force Base at 3 a.m. this morning. He is in our custody. He was greeted by [FBI] Director [Kash] Patel and [DC] US Attorney Jeanine Pirro,” Attorney General Pam Bondi told reporters at DOJ headquarters.

Al-Bakoush, the third Islamic extremist arrested in connection with the Benghazi assault, will be prosecuted “to the fullest extent of the law,” Bondi vowed, while Pirro said her team “will not stop” hunting down other attackers who remain at large.

Patel declined to state where the alleged terrorist was apprehended before he was flown to the US, citing the need to “protect the integrity of the investigation.”

A confidential federal informant previously testified that Al-Bakoush was one of “two key leaders of the Mission attack,” according to January 2020 court filings.

Two other convicted terrorists — including attack leader Ahmed Abu Khatallah, aka Ahmed Mukatallah — were previously arrested in Libya.

“The Benghazi saga was a painful one for Americans. It has stayed with all of us. And let me be very clear, there are more of them out there,” Pirro said, sharing how she and Patel had kept in touch with family members of the four Americans killed in the attack.

“Time will not stop us from going after these predators, no matter how long it takes, in order to fulfill our obligation to those families who suffered horrific pain at the hands of these violent terrorists,” she added.

An indictment unsealed Friday afternoon charged Al-Bakoush, a member of Al Qaeda-linked Ansar Al Sharia, with eight counts of conspiring to provide and actually providing material support to terrorists — including himself — and using those resources to murder US officials, injure others and set fire to the buildings that housed them in Libya.

Al-Bakoush and 19 co-conspirators also intended to “plunder property from the Mission, including documents, maps and computers containing sensitive information,” the 13-page document stated.

The team of 20 intended to use the records “to identify and coordinate additional attacks against United States citizens, installations, and interests in Libya,” according to the November 2025 filing in DC federal court.

The Sept. 11, 2012, assault on the US Special Mission in Libya’s second-largest city took the lives of US Ambassador Chris Stevens, State Department information management officer Sean Smith, as well as CIA contractors Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods.

The terrorists stormed the complex and set fire to it, while also launching mortars at a nearby CIA facility as part of a coordinated assault, officials said.

The indictment described how Al-Bakoush and the others “violently breached” the Mission’s gate around 9:45 p.m. on Sept. 11 and torched its buildings — including a villa housing Smith, Stevens and Scott Wickland, a diplomatic security agent who survived the attack.

Smith and Stevens died while trapped inside the compound, but Wickland survived.

The terrorists retreated a half-hour later and began firing on the complex with handguns, AK-47 assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades — before re-entering the Mission around 11:45 p.m.

Early on the morning of Sept. 12, they retreated again and fired on the CIA annex with mortars, killing Doherty and Woods and causing “serious bodily injury” to David Ubben, the State Department’s Assistant Regional Officer, and Mark Geist, another security officer at the facility.

Officials in the Obama administration suggested in the immediate aftermath that the attack was a spontaneous offshoot of protests over an anti-Muslim video rocketing around the internet.

A select House committee investigation found five years later that Obama officials failed to deploy military assets to Libya — despite intelligence warning of growing danger to American interests.

No diplomatic security agents in Benghazi attributed the attack to a “video” or “protest,” the report also noted, even as the White House used those exact words to explain the bloodshed.

Then-UN Ambassador Susan Rice, for example, had said on Sept. 16, 2012: “What sparked the recent violence was the airing on the Internet of a very hateful, very offensive video that has offended many people around the world.”

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) pressed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over the failures that led to the attack during a 2013 hearing, leading the future Democratic presidential nominee to snap: “What difference, at this point, does it make?”

“Hillary Clinton famously once said about Benghazi, ‘What difference, at this point, does it make?’ Well, it makes a difference to Donald Trump. It makes a difference to those families,” Bondi said Friday.

“And 14 years later, it makes a difference to law enforcement.”

“Let this case serve as a reminder,” she added. “If you commit a crime against the American people anywhere in this world, President Trump’s Justice Department will find you. It might not happen overnight, but it will happen. You can run, but you cannot hide.”

Patel said he worked on the Benghazi case as a young prosecutor and that the arrest of Al-Bakoush has brought the tragic episode “full circle.”

“When an act of terrorism of this magnitude strikes at the heart of our nation, we go to work,” the FBI boss told reporters.

“I was at the airfield with US Attorney Pirro earlier this morning when we did the formal, foreign transfer of custody of Bakoush into US custody to face prosecution,” he said. “And her office and the Department of Justice are going to execute justice for the fallen.”

Pirro added: “President Trump will make sure that the cavalry comes for Americans, no matter where they are in this world.”

“An American ambassador, elite military personnel and a State Department employee were all violently murdered,” she said. “The American cavalry never came. For 13 hours, [the victims] waited for help that never came.”

Mustafa al-Imam, another suspect in the attack, was captured by US special forces in October 2017. He was later convicted of federal terrorism charges and sentenced in January 2020 to 19 years and eight months in prison.

Khatallah was nabbed in June 2014. He was initially sentenced in June 2018 to 22 years in prison — a penalty described as “unreasonably low” by a federal appeals panel.

In September 2024, during the Biden administration, Katallah was resentenced to 28 years in federal prison on federal terrorism charges and other offenses.

The FBI’s New York Field Office, the DOJ National Security Division’s Counterterrorism Section, the Department of War, State Department and CIA all assisted in bringing Al-Bakoush to justice.

“Director Ratcliffe is deeply grateful for the relentless efforts of the Department of Justice and the FBI to bring to justice the individual allegedly responsible for the deaths of Americans in the horrific 2012 Benghazi attack,” said a CIA spokesperson.

“CIA and the Nation will never forget the extraordinary sacrifices of Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, who gave their lives in defense of others and exemplified the very best of our Agency.”