Delta Force commandos and FBI agents stormed a Libyan compound to grab the Benghazi terror mastermind in a surgical raid that bore striking similarities to the attack on Osama bin Laden, according to reports.
A year in the planning, special forces trained on a mock-up of Ahmed Abu Khattalah’s compound built at Fort Bragg, NC, a US military contractor told The Daily Beast.
US forces tricked Abu Khatallah into letting the team into his compound Sunday on the outskirts of Benghazi, allowing for the capture and removal without any shots being fired, a senior administration official told The Daily Beast.
Before Navy SEALs killed bin Laden in 2011, they did dry runs on a model of bin Laden’s Abbottabad, Pakistan, compound at Fort Bragg.
And also like the bin Laden raid, US officials did not tell local authorities about their plans beforehand, so as to guarantee absolute secrecy.
That clandestine operation miffed Libyan leaders, who believe US forces violated Tripoli’s sovereignty.
Justice minister Saleh al-Marghani said on Wednesday that Abu Khatallah should be returned to Libya and tried there.
And a government spokesman said in a televised address: “The government stresses its right to try Abu Khattalah on its territories and according to its laws.”
Despite Tripoli’s protests, local Libyans played a helpful role in locating Abu Khattalah for American forces, officials told CNN.
While Abu Khattalah — accused of masterminding the Benghazi attacks that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans in September 2012 — had brazenly given media interviews, the terrorist had reportedly been in hiding in recent months.
But new intelligence surfaced that Abu Khattalah “was going to be in a specific place that was advantageous” for a bloodless capture, according to The New York Times.
“He was isolated,” one US official told the Washington Post. “It was pretty clean.”
Another US official told Fox News: “He didn’t know what hit him.”
President Obama reportedly gave the order to grab Abu Khattalah on Friday.
The terrorist was read his Miranda rights and hauled off to the USS New York in the Mediterranean Sea, where he’ll be held until he’s brought to the United States for trial.
With Post Wire Services.