By Julie Shapiro
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
LOWER MANHATTAN — The Obama administration has reversed its decision to put the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks on trial in lower Manhattan.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other 9/11 terror suspects will instead be tried in a military tribunal at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced Monday.
Holder said he had little choice but to try the detainees at Gitmo, because of new Congressional restrictions that bar the terror suspects from U.S. soil.
"It is still my opinion that this case could have been tried in Manhattan," Holder said Monday, adding that he had grown up in New York City and gone to school in Manhattan and had "full confidence" in the ability of authorities here to hold a safe and secure trial.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and many downtown residents and family members of 9/11 victims vociferously opposed bringing the terrorists to lower Manhattan, fearing that the trial would endanger an area still recovering from the attacks of 10 years ago.
"It’s probably more appropriate to do it in a secure area with a military tribunal," Bloomberg told reporters Monday. "What I’ve read about military tribunals is they’re not an automatic kind of thing. They are a different form of a legal system, but something that this country can implement and not be ashamed of it."
The city had estimated that it would cost over $200 million a year to provide security for the trials, money that Bloomberg was worried the federal government would not be willing to pay.
Downtown residents also mobilized against the terror trials last year, concerned that the ramped-up security would create a quality-of-life nightmare downtown, especially since the city's plans included heavily manned checkpoints and snipers on surrounding roofs.
"We're elated that our government understands the severe impact that holding the terror trials at the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Courthouse would have on the surrounding lower Manhattan community," said Jeanie Chin, a leader of the Civic Center Residents Coalition, which protested the trial plans.
"We're glad that the Obama administration will not put this additional burden on us."
The Downtown Alliance business improvement district said Monday that the trials would have "slowed the momentum" of downtown's recovery.
Debra Burlingame, whose brother Charles Burlingame III was the pilot on the plane that hit the Pentagon, was also pleased to hear of the federal government's reversal.
Burlingame, a 57-year-old Westchester resident, said she had worried that the civilian trial would reveal too much classified information that could aid terrorists. She also did not want to give Mohammed and the other suspects a platform to expound their ideals.
"Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would have had a much greater opportunity to make propaganda statements that would be broadcast all over the world to rally jihadists," said Burlingame, founder of 9/11 Families for a Safe & Strong America. "Military commissions give less latitude for that."
Burlingame hopes that the military tribunal will bring swift justice to the accused terrorists, because she said the dragged-out battle over how to try the suspects has made it more difficult for family members to move on.
Not everyone was happy with the Obama administration's decision to try the alleged terrorists in a military tribunal.
While Julie Menin, chairwoman of Community Board 1, said that she was thrilled the trials would not be held in lower Manhattan, she believes military tribunals are the wrong move.
"As the community attacked on September 11, 2001, we have always maintained that the trials should be civilian and not military-run," Menin said in an email. "The federal courts have resulted in much tougher sentences for terrorists than the military tribunals and have resulted in hundreds of successful convictions."
Menin suggested last year that the federal government pick another venue for the civilian trials, such as West Point, which is also in the Southern District of New York, rather than holding them in lower Manhattan.
Still, some downtown residents would have welcomed the trials in their neighborhood, especially if the alternative is a more secretive Guantanamo Bay proceeding.
Jean Grillo, a longtime TriBeCa resident, said it would be fitting to bring the accused terrorists to justice at the site of their crime.
"We wanted it to be here because it happened here," Grillo said Monday. "People don't realize the health issues, the monetary issues. It's still happening."
