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The Guantánamo developments

crosenberg@MiamiHerald.com

Attorney General Eric Holder has announced a series of developments in the Obama administration's bid to shut down the prison camps at Guantánamo, chief among them plans for a 9/11 trial in New York City.

Here are the highlights:

The Pentagon's military commission case against five captives accused of mass murder in the Sept. 11, 2001 will be withdrawn. New charges and a new federal trial will take place in New York City.

The 9/11 accused aren't going anywhere soon. The five accused, among them former CIA captive Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who reportedly first confessed to the attacks after he was waterboarded, will remain at Guantánamo for at least 45 days while the White House files notice in Congress.

Holder will ask the 9/11 federal prosecutors, collaborating between Virginia and New York City, to seek the death penalty for all five men.

The military trial of Omar Khadr of Canada will continue. Federal prosecutors chose not to order a halt to his Guantánamo trial or move it to U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., which had been an option. The Toronto-born teen allegedly trained with al Qaeda before his capture at age 15. He is accused of throwing a grenade in Khost, Afghanistan, in July 2002 that killed a U.S. Special Forces soldier.

No venue has been chosen yet for military commission trials after the closure of the prison camps at Guantánamo. Holder has said the administration may miss President Barack Obama's Jan. 22 deadline.

The Pentagon will be authorized to pursue a military commission case against Abd al Rahim al Nashiri in the October 2000 al Qaeda suicide attack against the USS Cole off Aden, Yemen, that killed 17 U.S. sailors. Nashiri, a Yemeni, was also held by the CIA and subjected to waterboarding before his September 2006 transfer to Guantánamo.

The announcement left unclear how many other detainees at Guantánamo, who Friday numbered 215, would face either military or federal trial.

Friday's decisions were based on a ``Protocol on the Determination of Guantánamo Cases Referred for Prosecution'' that was made public in July. The protocol says that, where feasible, Guantánamo prosecutions would go to federal court.

Besides Khadr, three other detainees who will stay in military commissions: Ahmed al Darbi, a Saudi who allegedly plotted terrorist attacks against oil tankers in the Straits of Hormuz; Noor Uthman Mohammed, a Sudanese man accused of serving as a trainer and deputy commander at an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan before the 9/11 attacks; and Ibrahim Ahmed al Qosi, also of Sudan, who allegedly was a mortarman for al Qaeda and a bodyguard to Osama bin Laden.

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