The man who claimed to be the 11 Sep 01 strike "mastermind" will go to trial in New York, according to today's NYT. Steps toward keeping the promise to close Gitmo within a year appear to be continuing, despite delays caused by the uproar over what to do with detainees.

A photograph taken by the International Committee of the Red Cross of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed this year in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The detainee's family released the photo to a Web site, www.muslm.net.

The decision marks a milestone in the administration’s efforts to close the Guantánamo prison, something that President Obama announced shortly after taking office that he would do within a year, but that has proved difficult to achieve because of uncertainty about what to do with the detainees housed there.

Mr. Obama, asked about the decision in a news conference on his weeklong trip to Asia, declined to comment directly, but said that Mr. Mohammed would face justice.

“I’m absolutely convinced that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed will be subject to the most exacting demands of justice,” Mr. Obama said. “The American people insist on it, and my administration insists on it.”

Other detainees will face military trials. This is a small step toward

bringing America back from the Bush League Nation status we held from 11 Sep 01 through 20 Jan 09, but it's a step, and worth noting therefore.

But the administration will prosecute another set of high-profile detainees now being held at the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who is accused of planning the 2000 bombing of the Navy destroyer Cole in Yemen, and four other detainees — before a military commission.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said he would seek the death penalty against the five defendants if they are found guilty in federal court.

I for one applaud the efforts of AG Holder and President Obama to resolve these matters. I'm not at all sure that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has any peers in the United States, and I'm fairly certain impaneling an impartial jury in New York state, let alone NYC, to hear his trial is a Sisyphean task -- but then again, the people killed and maimed, and the survivors whose lives can never be the same, didn't have any sort of consideration or trial at Mohammed's behest before he unleashed the attacks that took out the Twin Towers, damaged the Pentagon and murdered hundreds of passengers in a Pennsylvania field.

The man is accused of a heinous crime. Let justice prevail.

New York City has been different. In March, for example, when the administration prepared to bring Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a suspect in the 1998 bombings of United States embassies in Africa that killed 224 people, to face trial there, Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said the city was well-accustomed to handling high-profile terror suspects.

“Bottom line is we have had terrorists housed in New York before,” Mr. Schumer said at a March news conference at the Capitol with other Democratic leaders. “They’ve been housed safely.”

Mr. Schumer at the time pointed to the “blind sheikh,” Omar Abdel Rahman, who was convicted in 1995 of conspiracy to blow up the United Nations building and other New York landmarks. “The main concern is bringing these terrorists to justice and making sure the public is safe,” Mr. Schumer said. “I have faith that the administration will do both.”

Still, Mr. Ghailani is not facing a potential death sentence, and is not nearly as high profile as Mr. Mohammed. A prosecution for the Sept. 11 attacks in New York City could test such attitudes.

There's more background in the Times story. It does look, though, as if the NYC bombings of the World Trade Center meant something particularly important to Mohammed's family:

Mr. Mohammed was captured on March 1, 2003, in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. For the next several years, he was held in secret prisons run by the C.I.A. In September 2006, Mr. Mohammed and 13 other “high value” Al Qaeda prisoners were transferred to the detention center in Guantánamo.

Aside from statements under interrogation, at a hearing held there released in March 2007, Mr. Mohammed took full credit for the 9/11 attacks and a number of other plots. (He also asserted that he had personally decapitated a kidnapped Wall Street Journal reporter, Daniel Pearl, in Pakistan.) On Dec. 8, 2008, Mr. Mohammed, along with four co-defendants, sent a note to a military judge at Guantánamo asking to confess and to plead guilty.

Mr. Mohammed, an ethnic Baluchi, was born in Kuwait on April 24, 1965. He is the uncle of Ramzi Yousef, mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombings. He studied mechanical engineering in the United States in the 1980s.

If, however, he is acquitted, then I submit he must also be subject to immediate and permanent deportation from the US. Unless, of course, he's found not guilty by reason of insanity -- if the trial jury should so find in his case, I'd recommend confinement in a mental hospital. If he should be found guilty, I'd recommend life without parole -- and I think it might be good if he had a 24/7/365 total isolation order, either way.

Cruel, you say?

Let him reflect on his achievements, say I, with no opportunity to brag.