BENGHAZI, Libya — Witnesses and the authorities have called Ahmed Abu Khattala one of the ringleaders of the Sept. 11 attack on the American diplomatic mission here. But just days after President Obama reasserted his vow to bring those responsible to justice, Mr. Abu Khattala spent two leisurely hours on Thursday evening at a crowded luxury hotel, sipping mango juice on a patio and scoffing at the threats coming from the American and Libyan governments.
Libya's fledgling national army is a "national chicken," Mr. Abu Khattala said, using an Arabic rhyme. Asked who should take responsibility for apprehending the mission's attackers, he smirked at the idea that the weak Libyan government could possibly do it. And he accused the leaders of the United States of "playing with the emotions of the American people" and "using the consulate attack just to gather votes for their elections."
Mr. Abu Khattala's defiance — no authority has even questioned him about the attack, he said, and he has no plans to go into hiding — offered insight into the shadowy landscape of the self-formed militias that have come to constitute the only source of social order in Libya since the fall of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
A few, like the militia group Ansar al-Shariah that is linked to Mr. Abu Khattala and that officials in Washington and Tripoli agree was behind the attack, have embraced an extremist ideology hostile to the West and nursed ambitions to extend it over Libya. But also troubling to the United States is the evident tolerance shown by other militias allied with the government, which have so far declined to take any action against suspects in the Benghazi attack.
Although Mr. Abu Khattala said he was not a member of Al Qaeda, he declared he would be proud to be associated with Al Qaeda's puritanical zeal for Islamic law. And he said that the United States had its own foreign policy to blame for the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. "Why is the United States always trying to impose its ideology on everyone else?" he asked. "Why is it always trying to use force to implement its agendas?"
Owing in part to the inability of either the Libyans or the Americans to mount a serious investigation, American dissections of the assault on the diplomatic mission in Benghazi have become muddled in a political debate over the identities and motivations of the attackers. Some Republicans have charged that the Obama administration initially sought to obscure a possible connection to Al Qaeda in order to protect its claim to have brought the group to its knees.
Mr. Abu Khattala, 41, wearing a red fez and sandals, added his own spin. Contradicting the accounts of many witnesses and the most recent account of the Obama administration, he contended that the attack had grown out of a peaceful protest against a video made in the United States that mocked the Prophet Muhammad and Islam.
He also said that guards inside the compound — Libyan or American, he was not sure — had shot first at the demonstrators, provoking them. And he asserted, without providing evidence, that the attackers had found weapons, including explosives and guns mounted with silencers, inside the American compound.
Although Mr. Abu Khattala's exact role remains unclear, witnesses have said they saw him directing other fighters that night. Libyan officials have singled him out, and officials in Washington say they are examining his role.
But Mr. Abu Khattala insisted that he had not been part of the aggression at the American compound. He said he had arrived just as the gunfire was beginning to crackle and had sought to break up a traffic jam around the demonstration. After fleeing for a time, he said, he entered the compound at the end of the battle because he was asked to help try to rescue four Libyan guards working for the Americans who were trapped inside. Although the attackers had set fire to the main building, Mr. Abu Khattala said he had not noticed anything burning.
At the same time, he expressed a notable absence of remorse over the assault, which resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including J. Christopher Stevens, the American ambassador. "I did not know him," he said.
He pointedly declined to condemn the idea that the demolition of a diplomatic mission was an appropriate response to such a video. "From a religious point of view, it is hard to say whether it is good or bad," he said.
In Washington, a Republican member of the House committee investigating the attack scoffed at Mr. Abu Khattala's account. "It just sounds fishy to say you are on the scene and not participating," said Representative Jason Chaffetz, a Utah Republican. "It was pitch black at 9:40 at night."
Suliman Ali Zway contributed reporting from Tripoli, Libya, and Michael S. Schmidt from Washington.
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