Ky. senator criticizes decision on 9/11 suspects

By BRUCE SCHREINER - Associated Press Writer

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell on Friday swiftly condemned the decision to bring five terror suspects to U.S. soil for trial, calling it a "huge mistake" that will weaken national security.

"These are people who orchestrated a mass murder, and it was an act of war, not a criminal matter," McConnell told reporters gathered in his Louisville office.

McConnell, R-Ky., reacted to word that self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other alleged conspirators in the 2001 attacks will stand trial in a civilian federal courthouse in New York. Attorney General Eric Holder said the defendants should be tried where their crimes occurred.

Prosecutors expect to seek the death penalty.

McConnell said bringing the suspects to the U.S. was a "step backward for our national security."

"It is a huge mistake," he said. "Nobody in America wants these terrorists tried in their local communities."

Congress created a system to have terror suspects tried at Guantanamo Bay, McConnell said.

"When you bring them into the U.S. court system, you give them the protections of the Bill of Rights and ... the U.S. criminal justice system," he said. "The defendant is entitled to know everything. And so that's how classified information gets out and compromises our national security."

Shifting the trials to the civilian legal system could make it tougher to win convictions, McConnell said. If the suspects were acquitted, a judge "could simply let them go here in the United States," he said.

McConnell said the trial of the trial of Omar Abdel Rahman, the so-called "blind sheik" who was tried for a plot against some two-dozen New York City landmarks, resulted in classified information being revealed and ending up in the hands of the al-Qaida terrorist network.

"Nobody is advocating leaving even these horrible criminals incarcerated forever without some adjudication," the senator said. "But we have a way to adjudicate them. There are courtrooms at Guantanamo, there is a military commission system set up for the very purpose of trying these people."

U.S. Rep. Harold "Hal" Rogers, R-Ky., also denounced moving the terror suspects to American soil.

The congressman said the defendants "pose an all-too-real security risk and do not deserve the same rights and privileges as our own citizens."

"I see no reason why these terrorists cannot be brought to justice right where they are in Cuba," Rogers said in a statement.