Trial date set for Benghazi suspect

The trial for the suspected mastermind of the 2012 attacks on a U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya, has been set for September 2017, a federal court declared Thursday.

In a brief order handing down a timeline for the trial, Judge Christopher Cooper of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia set the stage for a series of filings to be made over the next year and a half, culminating in what is likely to be a closely scrutinized trial on Sept. 25, 2017.

{mosads}The suspected terrorist, Ahmed Abu Khattala, is the only person to have been charged in connection with the attacks and is accused of multiple charges of murder, providing support to terrorists and other crimes.

Last month, the Justice Department announced it would not seek the death penalty in the case.

Four Americans were killed in the attacks on a U.S. diplomatic facility and separate CIA compound. Among the victims was Ambassador Christopher Stevens, the first to die in office since 1988.  

The harrowing episode was dramatized in a Hollywood blockbuster earlier this year.

Abu Khattala was captured at a seaside villa in 2014 and interrogated on a Navy ship in the Mediterranean before being brought to the U.S.

He has pleaded not guilty in the case.

The trial date puts the case well past this November’s presidential election, in which the Benghazi attacks are likely to be featured prominently Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s served as secretary of State during the time of the violence.

Republican critics have hounded Clinton and the rest of the Obama administration over their response to the attacks, as well as the apparent lack of preparation that allowed it to occur.

On Thursday, presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump listed the attack as a first example of how “lying cooked Hillary” misled the American public and family members of the victims.