Security will be at an all-time high for the trial of five accused 9/11 terrorists – just a few blocks and eight years away from the lost twin towers of the World Trade Center.
Rooftop snipers, armored vehicles and lock-down zones around the Pearl Street courthouse are part of the plan to insure safety during the trial of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and his cohorts.
“It’s highly appropriate that those accused in the deaths of nearly 3,000 human beings in New York City be tried here, and the NYPD is prepared for the security required,” Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly vowed.
The men are in the Guantanamo Bay terror prison and likely won’t be brought here for weeks, but New York’s law enforcement leaders are busy planning to keep things safe and secure.
The U.S. marshals will handle courthouse security, and their main mission is to protect those on trial. The job for the FBI and the NYPD is protecting the public from anyone hoping to disrupt the trial or gain international recognition by trying to free the defendants.
Security will include 24-hour fixed canine posts and a counterassault team car – an unmarked bulletproof SUV in the area.
The NYPD’s heavily armed Hercules teams will lock down and sweep the area before suspects are moved from the federal lockup to the courtroom via a not-so-secret underground tunnel.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder noted the tunnel means the accused terrorists “never have to see the light of day.”
Behind the scenes, the FBI, NYPD and CIA intelligence officers will take the temperature of the Muslim community while monitoring chatter from known terror groups to Internet chat rooms.
Holder said New York, after handling a number of terrorist trials in the past, was the clear choice for the trial of the 9/11 detainees.
“I asked the Marshals Service to look at a number of sites and tell me… ‘Which one is going to be the safest to bring these cases?'” Holder said. “They said New York.”
The city has handled several high-stakes, high-security terror trials since 1995.
That’s when the city mobilized against potential retaliation following the clean-sweep terrorism convictions of radical Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman and nine followers. Their terrorist bombing plot targeted the United Nations, the FBI’s New York headquarters, the Lincoln and Holland tunnels and the George Washington Bridge.
During the 2001 trial of the four men accused of plotting to blow up American embassies for Osama Bin Laden, bomb-sniffing dogs patrolled the court corridors during jury selection.
New Yorkers took the news, and the prospect of additional security measures, in stride.
“I’m not worried. I think it would be symbolic if he was tried and convicted here – a just result,” said lawyer James Powers, 37, who witnessed the 9/11 attack from his office window on Broadway. “To the extent we are already a target, I don’t think this really makes us more of one.”
(Source: NY Daily News)
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8 Responses
All for what? He killed 3,000 people, no trial needed. The only thing they should be debating is how to give him a slow death.
Unfortunately the reckless govt is not after them nor the ft hood suspect but rather after rubashkin. hope this govt learns the hard and painful way.
ENSURE safety, not INSURE safety.
Who teaches these people English?! I’m a European, I’m not a native speaker of English, I’ve *never* in my life visited an English-speaking country, and yet I would never make such mistakes…
These guys are most likely as guilty as can be. But the government did make some mistakes and arrested innocent people. If you were one of the innocents arrested mistakenly, wouldn’t you want a fair trial?
Why should New Yorkers pay the bill for this. Is New York a separate country from the US? The US was attacked and the US must pay all these expenses. The proper place and the only place for this trial is Washington DC our capital city.
Given that most of the world believes that the well publicized credits were solely the result of torture, why would they attack the trial? The most publicized cases so far have involved Osama’s driver, who for all purposes was found to have been merely a glorified cabbie with the bad luck of being hired by a terrorist, and a bunch of anti-communist Turkish refugees who had nothing to do with anti-American terrorism. The idea of having a trial is to prove that Osama and company are real, are terrorists, and that the government’s claim as to who is responsible are based on something other than circumstantial evidence and confessions gained by torture.
haifagirl, what do you base your assertions on. Based on what evidence.
akuperma, looks like you are really, really ignorant and a liberal left-leaning doofus. Both Rep. Peter King, Sen. John McCain, and Rudy Giuliani blasted the President and Eric Holder on this decision. It appears that you take your information only from sources that will validate your viewpoint. How dishonest and dangerous…
#7- If our courts are mere kangaroo courts, then we have lost the “Clash of civilizations” and they have forced us to give up our way of doing things, and to adopt the Islamic way of Justice, which is little better than that used by Stalin and Hitler. The war is about the western Judeo-Christian civilization on one hand, and Isalmic (de facto) fascism on the other.
By trying them in an American court, we prove our superiority. We win. We prove that our way of life is good, and their way of life is a hypocritical joke. A secret “commission” is not a court, whether run by our side, or the Gestapo, or the KGB.