The old federal courthouse, right, at 40 Centre Street in New York is see on Monday, Nov. 16, 2009. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the professed mastermind of 9/11, and four of his alleged henchmen are headed for a federal civilian trial in New York; five others, including a top suspect in the bombing of the USS Cole, will be tried by a military commission
The old federal courthouse at 40 Centre Street in New York is see on Monday, Nov. 16, 2009. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the professed mastermind of 9/11, and four of his alleged henchmen are headed for a federal civilian trial in New York; five others, including a top suspect in the bombing of the USS Cole, will be tried by a military commission.
Attorney General Eric Holder announced Friday that Mohammed, the professed mastermind of the 2001 attacks, and four accused henchmen would be brought from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to New York to face a civilian federal trial.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is seen shortly after his capture during a raid in Pakistan. An Obama administration official said Friday Nov. 13, 2009 that accused Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other Guantanamo Bay detainees will be sent to New York to face trial in a civilian federal court.
President Barack Obama predicted that professed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will be convicted and executed, as Attorney General Eric Holder defended the decision to put him on trial in the U.S. civilian legal system.
In one of a series of TV interviews during his trip to Asia, Obama said those offended by the legal privileges given to Mohammed by virtue of getting a civilian trial rather than a military tribunal won't find it "offensive at all when he's convicted and when the death penalty is applied to him."
Obama quickly added that he did not mean to suggest he was prejudging the outcome of Mohammed's trial. "I'm not going to be in that courtroom," he said. "That's the job of the prosecutors, the judge and the jury."
In interviews broadcast on NBC and CNN Wednesday, the president also said that experienced prosecutors in the case who specialize in terrorism have offered assurances that "we'll convict this person with the evidence they've got, going through our system."
Obama said the American people should have no concern about the capability of civilian courts to try suspected terrorists. Attorney General Eric Holder last week announced the decision to bring Mohammed and four others detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to trial at a lower Manhattan courthouse.
Holder sought to explain U.S. prosecution strategy Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, where lawmakers are split along largely partisan lines over his decision last week to send Mohammed and four alleged henchmen from a detention center at Guantanamo Bay to New York to face a civilian federal trial in New York.
Critics of Holder's decision — mostly Republicans — have argued the trial will give Mohammed a world stage to spout hateful rhetoric.
Holder said such concerns are misplaced, because judges can control unruly defendants and any pronouncements by Mohammed would only make him look worse.
"I have every confidence that the nation and the world will see him for the coward that he is," Holder told the committee. "I'm not scared of what Khalid Sheik Mohammed has to say at trial — and no one else needs to be either."
Holder said the public and the nation's intelligence secrets can be protected during a public trial in civilian court.
"We need not cower in the face of this enemy," Holder says. "Our institutions are strong, our infrastructure is sturdy, our resolve is firm, and our people are ready."
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the committee chairman, supported Holder's decision.
Mohammed, Leahy said, "committed crimes of murder in our country and we will prosecute them in our country. We're the most powerful nation on earth, we have a justice system that is the envy of the world. We will not be afraid."
The committee's ranking Republican, Jeff Sessions of Alabama, criticized the decision, saying it treats Mohammed like a common criminal.
"I believe this decision is dangerous, I believe it's misguided, I believe it's unnecessary," Sessions said.
Holder announced Friday that five accused Sept. 11 conspirators currently held at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, will be transferred to federal court in Manhattan to face trial — just blocks from the site of the former World Trade Center.
Five other suspects, Holder said, will be sent to face justice before military commissions in the United States, though a location for those commissions has not yet been determined.
The actual transfer of the suspects to New York is still many weeks away. The transfers are a key step in Obama's pledge to close the detention center at Guantanamo, which currently houses some 215 detainees. The administration is not expected to meet its January deadline to shutter the facility.
In addition to the 10 detainees named Friday, Holder is expected to send others to trials and commissions in the United States.
Another, larger group of detainees is expected to be released to other countries. Some, the president has said, are too dangerous to be released and cannot be put on trial, and those detainees will continue to be imprisoned.
The attorney general says his decisions between trials and commissions were based strictly on which venues he thought would bring the strongest prosecution.
Opponents of the plan, including Holder's predecessor Michael Mukasey, have accused him of adopting a "pre-9/11" approach to terrorism.
Holder emphatically denied that.
"We are at war, and we will use every instrument of national power — civilian, military, law enforcement, intelligence, diplomatic and others — to win," Holder said.
Separately, a member of the Judiciary Committee, Democrat Charles Schumer of New York, is urging the administration to reimburse the city for what he says could be $75 million in extra security costs related to the terror trials.
Dangerous to trial terrorists in cilivian courts.
The prosecution is planned for a court complex just blocks from where the World Trade Center towers were destroyed in the attack blamed on these men. The courthouse is among the most secure in the nation, ringed by closed-off streets, 24-hour guard posts, anti-truck-bomb barricades and street video cameras so powerful that they can read the print off a passerby's newspaper.
Holder's decision to try the Sept. 11 suspects sparked debate over the security risks posed to densely-populated lower Manhattan, but far less has been said about attempted violence by the defendants themselves.
At the same federal lockup where Mohammed and the others are to be held, federal prison guard Louis Pepe was attacked in late 2000 by Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, a former top aide to Osama bin Laden who was awaiting trial in the embassies case.
Salim surprised Pepe by using a squeezable plastic honey bear container filled with hot sauce as a kind of homemade pepper spray that temporarily blinded the guard.
The inmate then took a plastic comb ground into the shape of a dagger and plunged it into Pepe's left eye. The point pierced deep into his brain, causing severe permanent injury to his sight, speech, and movement.
After the attack, prosecutors say papers found in the cell showed Salim's plan had been to take hostages inside the prison and free his co-defendants. While such a "breakout" plot may sound far-fetched given the security of the federal buildings, in Salim's case the very attempt nearly killed someone.
Salim's lawyer in that case, Richard Lind, said he had "mixed feelings" about Holder's decision, because while he believes the suspects should be tried in civilian court, he has security concerns.
"The prison is not very secure," Lind said. "Maybe things have improved since then, but I think it would be very difficult to manage."
When Mohammed and the others are taken from their cells to the courtroom, U.S. marshals will provide security.
There, too, the last major al-Qaida trial serves as a warning.
During a pre-trial hearing, al-Qaida suspect Wadih El-Hage leaped out of a jury box that held several defendants and raced toward the judge, who maneuvered his tall black chair in front of him as a shield. The defendant was tackled by a deputy U.S. marshal and slammed against a wall next to an American flag, about a dozen feet from the judge.
The trial was held in a large ceremonial courtroom with its own security check — a sort of perimeter within the perimeter. Outside the building, heavily-armed marshals stood guard. When hijacked airplanes slammed into the World Trade Center towers Sept. 11, 2001, those same marshals rushed to the scene to join rescue efforts.
Jeff Carter, a spokesman for the marshals, said the agency will provide the maximum possible security. Both the marshals and Bureau of Prisons have "extensive experience managing the security of dangerous defendants and alleged terrorists in the U.S. judicial system," he said.
Even with extra security, some are convinced trial in a civilian court is a bad idea. The most high-profile critic so far has been former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, who said over the weekend the decision displayed "a lack of concern for the rights of the public."
New York Gov. David Paterson said Monday that holding the trial in the city "is not a decision that I would have made."
Mayor Michael Bloomberg tried to calm any fears.
"This is nothing new; we've done this a lot," said Bloomberg. "Every time there's a high profile case, we provide enhanced security. A lot of it you don't see, but it's there."
Josh Dratel, a lawyer who represented El-Hage, said it was right to bring Mohammed and others to trial in New York, both for legal reasons and because, he said, "there's nothing that makes New York more of a target" than it already is.
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