'No decision yet where to try 9/11 plotters'

The Obama administration is still mulling where to hold the trials of the alleged co-plotters behind the September 11 attacks, US attorney general Eric Holder said.

The Obama administration is still mulling where to hold the trials of the alleged co-plotters behind the September 11 attacks, US attorney general Eric Holder said on Sunday.

HT Image

"We are still in the process of considering that," Holder said in an interview with CBS "Face The Nation," adding "No decision's been made yet as to exactly where the trial is going to occur."

Holder, who has vowed to push for the death penalty for the self-confessed mastermind of the 2001 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, recalled he had recommended the trial should be held in civilian court.

But many are still pushing for the trial to be held in a military court, and the process has bogged down with no trial yet underway more than eight years after the attacks.

"Justice has been denied too long," Holder insisted.

"What we want to do is to hold accountable as effectively as we can the people who are responsible for what happened on September the 11th."

US President Barack Obama has vowed to close the notorious Guantanamo Bay US military prison in Cuba where the men are currently being held.

But the move has been stiffly opposed by Republican lawmakers and residents in New York still scarred by the events of that September morning when planes hi-jacked by Al-Qaeda militants were flown into the Twin Towers.

Almost 3,000 people were killed in the attacks, in which a plane also plunged into the Pentagon close to the capital, Washington, while passengers on a fourth jet battled their hijackers, crashing into a Pennsylvania field.

Holder acknowledged that the administration had run into problems in bringing the men to New York for trial.

"We've had to deal with a variety of things. Funding, and dealing with Congress," he said, adding there had also been concerns from local officials.