New York, January 08: New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has asked the Obama administration to foot the bill for the planned trial of the 9-11 mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, which he estimates at $216 million for the first year, media reports said Thursday.
Sheikh Mohammed and four defendants will stand trial in a federal district court in lower Manhattan, which suffered heavily when two hijacked commercial planes were used by terrorists as missiles to hit the World Trade Center’s twin towers Sep 11, 2001, killing more than 2,700 people.
Media reports said Bloomberg had written to Attorney General Eric Holder, federal budget officials and congressmen to help finance the trial and high costs of security operations that New York would provide.
No dates have been set for the trial. The reports said costs for the trial may increase as the legal proceedings get underway, involving City Hall’s expenditures forsecurity measures.
‘I don’t want to be in a situation where I have to take security away from other parts of this city,’ media reports quoted Bloomberg as saying. ‘We only have so much money, and we only have so many police. We can only afford so many police.’
It was not yet known when the 9-11 defendants will be transferred from the Guantanamo Bay detention centre to New York to stand trial as part of US President Barack Obama’s attempt to close the controversial prison in Cuba.
–Agencies