Washington, January 31: The Obama administration is proposing a USD 200 million fund to help pay for security costs in cities hosting the trials of accused terrorists such as September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
A congressional aide familiar with the plan says the money will be included in the president’s budget being released Monday. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity because the spending blueprint hasn’t been announced.
The administration said late last year the trials would take place in federal court in lower Manhattan, near where the World Trade Centre once stood. But there’s growing opposition from the city, and it now seems likely that the White House will decide to hold the trial elsewhere.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg has put the cost of tighter security at USD 216 million just for the first year after Mohammed and the others were to arrive from the US military detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. New York City officials had warned of massive gridlock in lower Manhattan due to the extraordinary security steps that would have been required to host the trial.
The money for terrorist trials is just one piece of a USD 3.7 trillion or so budget plan for 2011 to be released Monday.
Options for alternative trial sites include the northern Virginia city of Alexandria, which hosted the 2006 sentencing trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, who pleaded guilty to helping plan the 9/11 attacks.
-Agencies