Convenient capture, eh? Why now?

Captured Benghazi suspect did interviews with U.S. media outlets as authorities searched for him

Ahmed Abu Khattala, suspected leader of the September 2012 Benghazi attacks who was seized by American forces Sunday, was interviewed by CNN and The New York Times in recent months and years, even after the U.S. charged him with crimes related to the deadly assault.

The suspected ringleader of the deadly 2012 Benghazi attacks, who was captured by U.S. forces over the weekend, was actually interviewed by multiple media outlets last year — a stunning revelation that could raise questions over why it took the U.S. so long to arrest the man.

Ahmed Abu Khattala, a leader of the Benghazi branch of the terror group Ansar al-Sharia in Libya, was captured by American special forces in Libya Sunday for his suspected involvement in planning the fatal Sept. 11, 2012, assault that left four people dead, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens.

But Abu Khattala, whom the U.S. had charged for the crime last summer but didn’t apprehend until now, has conducted multiple media interviews with U.S. outlets in recent months and years, with reporters claiming he wasn’t hard to find.

Last August, CNN’s Arwa Dawson interviewed Abu Khattala for two hours “in public at a coffee shop of a well-known hotel” in Benghazi, she explained during the segment.

“For a suspected terrorist, who may have been involved in the murder of four Americans, he’s really not that difficult to find,” Dawson said during her report, adding that Abu Khattala “seemed to be confident, his demeanor most certainly not that of a man who believed he was going to be detained or targeted any time soon.”

In the audio interview, Abu Khattala, through a translator, didn’t deny he was at the compound the night of the attack, but said the gunfire and chaos had already erupted before he arrived.

ESAM OMRAN AL-FETORI/REUTERSThe U.S. Consulate in Benghazi went up in flames after the Sept. 11, 2012, attack.

“When we withdrew, there was shooting with medium guns … and people panicked and we tried to control traffic,” he said.

Abu Khattala also claimed he was never contacted by U.S. or Libyan authorities, even though U.S. officials confirmed last August that they had charged Abu Khattala with helping to plan the attack.

In an interview with The New York Times from October 2012, Abu Khattala appeared to strike a more defiant tone.

“Why is the United States always trying to impose its ideology on everyone else?” he told Times reporter David Kirkpatrick, in a rant suggesting the U.S. had only itself to blame for terrorist attacks. “Why is it always trying to use force to implement its agendas?”

Abu Khattala went on, during his interview with The Times, to accuse U.S. lawmakers of using the Benghazi attack to “(play) with the emotions of the American people” and “to gather votes for their elections.”

He denied, however, that he was part of the attack that night, claiming that he had only entered the compound toward the end of the battle.

Witnesses of the attack had repeatedly told authorities that they saw Abu Khattala leading other fighters at the compound the night of the attack.

The U.S. charged Abu Khattala and several others in a sealed complaint filed last year in U.S. District Court in Washington that formally accused him of providing, attempting and conspiring to provide material support to terrorists that resulted in death; discharging, brandishing, using, carrying and possessing a firearm during a crime of violence; and killing a person in the course of an attack on a federal facility and conspiring to do so.