NEW YORK — To many, it felt exquisitely right: This is where it began. This is where it must end.
Others wanted the reality of it pushed far away, to a setting much less tormented by that indelible date.
This sharp duality of reactions greeted the news Friday that the government would have the alleged plotters of the Sept. 11 attack stand trial in New York, in a solemn federal courthouse a few blocks from where the World Trade Center’s twin towers once stood and then fell.
The decision got people asking: Does the city want this? Can it possibly bear it?
“Let them come to New York,” said Jim Riches, a retired deputy chief of the New York Fire Department, whose son, Jimmy, also a firefighter, died in the attack. “Let them get on trial. Let’s do it the right way, for all the world to see what they’re like. Let’s go. It’s been too long.”
A trial will mean a forced public reattachment to a terrorist act that took almost 3,000 lives, singed the city’s soul and tested its resilience.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the professed mastermind of the attack, along with four others accused in the plot, will be ferried to the city’s own jail cells and put on trial almost in sight of the flattened crime scene. And everyone will be watching.
New York’s public officials, for the most part, lined up in support of a trial here. And many others accepted the development as poetic justice, an appropriate circling to an endpoint.
“I welcome anything that would bring these terrorists to trial,” said Sally Regenhard, whose son, Christian, died in the attack, his remains never recovered. “After eight long years, there has been no justice on this on any level, and we want these people brought to justice.”
The lingering wash of emotions of Sept. 11, however, runs strong and runs differently. To many others, the prospect of the trial was both unfair and too repulsive to entertain.
“It’s absolutely disgusting,” said Joan Molinaro, whose son, Carl, a firefighter, died in the attack. She said of Mohammed: “He was willing to plead guilty in a military court. Now he comes to New York and gets all the rights of an American citizen, which he isn’t. He’s going to be, what, two blocks from ground zero, where he can see his handiwork and mock those he murdered.
“Every day, I get up and know I’ll never see my son again,” she said, weeping. “This is just a smack in his face.”
Margit Arias-Kastell lost her husband, Adam Arias, in Tower 2.
She, too, could not countenance the prospect of the suspects being defended by lawyers in a court in her city. She was among scores of relatives who had signed a letter opposing regular criminal trials for them.
“It’s totally unfair,” she said. “Why do we have to constantly relive this? When do we get to be at peace? They should be hung.”
Many of the city’s elected officials endorsed the decision.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in a statement: “It is fitting that 9/11 suspects face justice near the World Trade Center site, where so many New Yorkers were murdered.”
He pointed out that the city had been the setting for other terrorism trials, including that of Omar Abdel Rahman, who was convicted in 1995 of a plot to blow up New York landmarks.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler, whose district includes Lower Manhattan, said in a statement: “New York is not afraid of terrorists. We want to confront them, we want to bring them to justice and we want to hold them accountable for their despicable actions.”
Yet there has been widespread public opposition to allowing any U.S. city to accept for trial, or detention, detainees being held at the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Various legislators have argued that their entry would be dangerous and put populations in peril.
