By Suzanne Ma
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
LOWER MANHATTAN — Pressure to make a final decision to move the 9/11 terror trials out of the city continued to mount Wednesday, a day after Attorney General Eric Holder said holding the civilian trials in a Manhattan court house was still a possibility.
Community Board 1 Chairperson Julie Menin echoed the community's call to move the trials on Wednesday.
“This is not the time to equivocate," Menin said in a statement. "There is no justification to spend close to a billion dollars on a multi-year trial that would risk the security of residents and workers and jeopardize the financial capital of the country during an ongoing economic recession of historic proportions."
Last month, Community Board 1 unanimously passed a resolution calling for the trials to be relocated to another, more secure location within the Southern District. The resolution suggested four potential locations, including Governors Island, Stewart Air National Guard Base in Newburgh, the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and the Bureau of Prisons jail complex at FCI Otisville.
Menin said the Attorney General has yet to respond to the resolution, which was sent to his office in January.
On Tuesday, Holder was commenting on the Najibullah Zazi case, saying his department was clearly able to handle terrorists.
"This demonstrates that our federal civilian criminal justice system has the ability to incapacitate terrorists, has the ability to gain intelligence from those terrorists and is a valuable tool in our fight against terrorism," Holder said at news conference after Zazi's guilty plea.
