Stop coddling the 9/11 killers — the war on terror is far from over, former Mayor Rudy Giuliani fumed yesterday.
The decision by the Obama administration to put the self-proclaimed mastermind of the terror attacks and four accomplices on trial in New York is pure politics, Giuliani charged in interviews yesterday on Fox News and CNN.
The decision, he said, proclaims, “both in substance and reality, the war on terror, in their point of view, is over.”
“There seems to be an over-concern with the rights of terrorists and a lack of concern with the rights of the public.”
He noted that terror chief Khalid Sheik Mohammed “asked to be brought to New York” when he was first arrested.
“I didn’t think we were in the business of granting the requests of terrorists.”
The Democratic administration’s plan to try Mohammed and his accused co-conspirators in federal criminal trials in New York is a shift from the Republican Bush administration’s anti-terror strategy — which created military tribunals for all suspects held at Guantanamo Bay.
The Obama administration plans to close Guantanamo.
The five suspects have been accused of conspiring to finance, train and direct the 19 hijackers who seized four airliners used in the attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon, killing nearly 3,000 people.
Their trial here, Giuliani said, would be a waste of “millions and millions of dollars.”
“Anyone that tells you this doesn’t create additional security problems, of course, isn’t telling you the truth,” he said.
Other Republicans echoed similar concerns in interviews on CBS, Fox and CNN.
“They [the terrorists] are going to do everything they can to disrupt it and make it a circus and allow them to use it as a platform to push their ideology,” said Michigan Rep. Pete Hoekstra, the top Republican on the House intelligence committee.
But White House senior adviser David Axelrod shot back, “We believe that these folks should be tried in New York City . . . near where their heinous acts were conducted, in full view, in our court system.”
He also reiterated the White House intention to close Guantanamo. “We are going to get it done,” he said.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said on NBC’s “Meet The Press” that “I want to see them brought to justice. The most important thing for me is that, you know, they pay the ultimate price for what they did to us on 9/11.”
Mayor Bloomberg applauded the decision.
He said he had “great confidence” that the NYPD and feds would “handle security expertly.”
Democratic Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, whose district includes Ground Zero, said, “Would I prefer it elsewhere? Probably, but you know at this point it’s here, and let’s just make sure that we get the security and the resources that we need.”
The administration has to give Congress 45 days’ notice of its intent to transfer Guantanamo detainees from military to civilian lockups.
As the trial nears — proceedings aren’t expected to start for at least two years — the detainees will sit it out at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan, where a special unit is set aside for terror suspects.
Additional reporting by Murray Weiss