Try terrorists elsewhere, lower Manhattan requests

Associated Press

NEW YORK — New Yorkers living near the World Trade Center disaster site are asking the federal government to keep its terrorism trials and the dangers they could pose out of Manhattan.

A community board representing about 50,000 residents sent a letter to the Office of Homeland Security last month making that request and asking for sophisticated monitoring devices to warn of biological, chemical and nuclear agents.

"Regrettably, our district has twice been targeted by terrorists," the letter said. "We will continue to be a potential target."

The district, on the southern tip of Manhattan, includes the trade center site, the New York Stock Exchange, City Hall and two federal courthouses.

Those two courthouses have been the site of six major terrorism trials since the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center killed six people and injured more than 1,000. The same year, the FBI also unearthed a plot to blow up five New York City landmarks in a single day.

The terrorism trials have resulted in the convictions of two dozen men, many of whom spent weeks prior to trial in a nearby federal lockup. There have been at least two escape attempts, including one in which a guard was stabbed in the eye with a comb filed to a point, and area residents have long feared the courthouses could be targeted as revenge for terrorism-related arrests.

Several men suspected in terrorist plots are still awaiting their trials, some of which are expected to take place in the courthouses of lower Manhattan.

Paul Goldstein, a district manager for the community board, said members had complained about some of the same issues even before Sept. 11. During the Clinton administration, the board wrote to former Attorney General Janet Reno urging an end to terrorism trials in the area. Goldstein couldn’t recall if Reno’s office responded.

So far, he said, the board has not received a response from Homeland Security director Tom Ridge.

A message left with Ridge’s office by The Associated Press on Friday was not returned.

Herb Haddad, a spokesman for U.S. attorney James Comey, said his office would have no comment.

"Obviously, we would like to think that federal officials take these concerns seriously, especially at a time like this," Goldstein said.

"Lower Manhattan has enough targets already without bringing terrorists into the neighborhood," he said. "You’re jeopardizing the lives of thousands of people who live and work in this type of community when you put such a sensitive trial in their midst."