NEW YORK (Reuters) - Forty percent of New Yorkers believe the trial of accused September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed makes an attack on the city more likely, according to a new poll, while security experts say it is already the top target in America.
The planned trial of Mohammed and four accused accomplices has stoked debate in the city where nearly 3,000 people died in the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center.
Rudy Giuliani, who was mayor at the time of the attacks, and others say it makes the city a target, but police say they can handle such events. Some on Wall Street who lost colleagues in the attacks say they are sickened at the prospect.
A Marist College Institute for Public Opinion poll on Tuesday found 40 percent of New Yorkers say holding the trial blocks from Ground Zero, the site of the destroyed World Trade towers, increases likelihood of another attack in the city.
The telephone survey of 602 New Yorkers had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
A Daily News editorial on Tuesday called the trial, "a profoundly wrong step that will undermine the War on Terror and increase the threat to New York."
But Vincent Cannistraro, a former CIA counter-terrorism chief, said: "It will be an extraordinary event in terms of media coverage and the public reaction to the theater ... but in terms of physically presenting a greater threat to the city of New York, or the citizens of New York, I don't think so."
"I'm not sure it presents any greater danger to New York, which is already a symbol for terrorists," he said.
U.S. Republican Representative Peter King of New York took the opposite view.
"Detaining and trying these five terrorists only a few blocks from the World Trade Center site where, by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's design, thousands were brutally murdered puts our nation -- and New York City -- at greater risk," King said.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said last week the five men would be removed from the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba ahead of their trial in a Manhattan federal court, which he called an ideal venue and the site of many successful prosecutions of accused terrorists since 2001.
POLICE SAY CITY IS PREPARED
New York City's police department said the city will handle the trial without security problems.
"There's already security improvements in the area that lend itself to providing a secure environment for a trial like this," said police spokesman Paul Browne. "We've dealt with high-profile events, including terrorism-related ones, many times. We're prepared for this one."
He declined to detail what precautions were planned or the costs for trial security, except to say that he expected Washington to reimburse the city for its costs.
Browne said eight terrorism plots against the city have been scuttled since 2001, including plots to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge and the retaining wall at Ground Zero.
The five accused men could be brought to New York within weeks and will likely be held in a high-security wing of the Metropolitan Correctional Center known as "10-South," a fortress-like unit in the heart of the Chinatown neighborhood.
The lower Manhattan jail has held multiple high-profile defendants in recent years, including Omar Abdel-Rahman, known as the "Blind Sheik", who was convicted in 1995 for conspiring to blow up the United Nations building and other New York City landmarks, and admitted U.S. swindler Bernard Madoff.
"The defendants in this case (will) go from their jail to the courthouse without ever being outside," Browne said.
Giuliani said the trial would give "an unnecessary advantage to the terrorists" and pose risks to New York. "Anyone that tells you this doesn't create additional security problems, of course, isn't telling you the truth," said Giuliani, who spoke to CNN and Fox News.
Michael Bloomberg, the current mayor, said, "It is fitting that 9/11 suspects face justice near the World Trade Center site where so many New Yorkers were murdered."
As many as 7 percent of New Yorkers have some form of post-traumatic stress disorder because of the September 11 attacks, said Yuval Neria, director of the Trauma and PTSD Program at the New York State Psychiatric Institute at Columbia University. And while the trial could be cathartic for some, "for others, it will be brutally painful," Neria said.
Howard Lutnick, chief executive of Cantor Fitzgerald, which lost 658 of its 960 New York employees in the September 11 attacks, said he found the planned trial distressing.
"The concept of this being a circus just nauseates me. I can't get my head around it," Lutnick told the Reuters Global Finance Summit in New York.
5 comments:
I can see why people want the trials to take place in New York, to get back at those terrorists who tore it down. It would make sense to have justice done to them in the place that they decided to destroy.
However, I think they should have the trials in an unknown place both to protect the the citizens of the city and to still get those terrorists what they deserve.
As for saying that New York is protected, weren't they also sure that New York would be safe before 9/11?
The thought of holding the trial in NYC and posing a threat to the city crossed my mind earlier this week. I think the trial location should have either been kept secret all together or not revealed until right before the trial. With that being said, the trial is being held in NYC. It's kinda funny how it seems that the whole 9/11 debacle has come full circle in a way.
first of all were going to allow people who bombed americas to have a fair trial i dont see the logic in giving someone a trial when they already confessed to comitting it, being that all this will turn into is a media fest on how they were treated in gitmo its insanity this administration feels that they always know whats best even though they obviously dont have the slightest clue what is actualy going on or what the people real want, first you close down gitmo for no reason other than the fact that it cost to much money but its a nesessity to have a facility like that so that we dont have to give them the rights that AMERICAN CITIZENS have they dont deserve what we have they kill us for what we have people die because america has to be better than the next guy we cant use hollow points we cant use torture we cant wire tap without a warrant its crap because people die when we have to abide by laws like that its insanity but we stil manage so survive well so far i should say who knows how long we will stay at the top with the amount were going down its sad i hope for the day when a new administaration comes in and fixes all that has already been done in this
Wait a minute, Obama said about two years ago that he wanted to have all terrorists tried by the military. What caused him to change his mind and let Mohammed's trial be run in New York? I guess the President's reasoning is that he feels it's fitting for the trial of the man who planned the 9/11 attack should be handled by the city where 9/11 occurred.
Whatever good reason Obama had for making this decision, I still don't think that holding the trial of a terrorist in New York City is a good idea. For starters, it's too risky. Sure the police say the city is prepared for this trial, but that doesn't mean safety is guaranteed. Also, the 9/11 suspects are going to have their trial handled by A CIVILIAN COURT. These terrorists are genuine threats to America and here they are being treated like common criminals! I just don't think this trial is in the right hands.
I sort of agree with the editorial in the Daily News. The threat to New York may indeed become increased by the trial. But then again, New York City has faced a worse enough threat.
The trial in my opinion doesnt seem likely to create another attack on the city. Most New Yorkers are just paranoid to the fact that it could happen again, there is just no telling when. The trial just gives people a reason to pinpoint an attack when there really could not be one. New Yorkers are just worried that if this trial occurs something catastrophic could happen and no one wants to see another 9/11 happen.
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