WASHINGTON: The trial of Ahmad Abu Khattala — the suspected mastermind of the 2012 Benghazi, Libya, attacks — will be one of the biggest terrorism cases yet for the US Justice Department under a leader who has said it shouldn’t be handling such cases.

Since his time as a US senator, Jeff Sessions has argued that terrorism suspects should be sent to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, rather than prosecuted in US courts by the Justice Department he now oversees. He’s in lock-step with President Donald Trump, who promised during the presidential campaign to fill the prison with “bad dudes.”

But the Trump administration has yet to send a terror suspect there. And next week, on October 2, it will open the civilian trial of Ahmad Abu Khattala, who is charged in connection with the September 2012 attack on the US diplomatic mission in Benghazi that killed US Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. The case became political fodder, with Republicans accusing the Obama administration of intentionally misleading the public and stonewalling congressional investigators, though officials denied any wrongdoing. The Obama administration, which had been trying to shutter Guantanamo, brought Abu Khattala to the US to face charges after his capture in 2014. Republican lawmakers had warned that valuable intelligence might be sacrificed when a detainee is afforded the legal protections of the American justice system, like access to a lawyer and the right to remain silent. They argue that the government can learn more about future plots by holding suspects as enemy combatants and questioning them indefinitely.

But Abu Khattala’s case shows that even in the American court system, the government has broad freedom to glean and use intelligence from terror suspects, said Jonathan Hafetz, a senior attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union who has handled terrorism cases.

Meanwhile, military commissions since 2001 have resolved just eight cases that ended in convictions, four of which were later overturned. Sessions has lamented the problems with the commissions but still supports their use.

The White House is drafting a detention policy, but there is nothing that would prevent Trump from sending suspects to Guantanamo again.