WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is conducting an intense security review as part of a plan to bring one of the world’s most notorious terrorism suspects from Guantanamo Bay to Washington for a trial just steps from the Capitol, officials said.
Republican critics said the plan would make the city more dangerous, risk compromising U.S. intelligence methods and provide a powerful and expensive bullhorn for Osama bin Laden’s alleged lieutenant, Riduan Isamuddin, and two associates.
Isamuddin, better known as Hambali, is thought to be the main link between al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah, the terrorism group blamed for the 2002 bombing at a Bali nightclub that killed 202 people.
“Such a plan is unacceptable, and I will vehemently oppose it,” Rep. Frank R. Wolf, R-Va., wrote Friday in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder.
Wolf cited what he said were classified briefings he received about terrorism threats to the United States.
The plan under review at the Justice Department was described by multiple U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss private planning meetings. The officials said a decision could come in a matter of weeks.
Other trials also might occur in Washington and New York, meaning the most significant terrorism trials in generations would be conducted in the two cities targeted in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
After his capture in 2003, Hambali was among the terrorism suspects held for years in secret CIA prisons. U.S. intelligence officials have publicly linked him to the attempted assassination of a Philippine ambassador and the coordinated Christmas Eve 2000 bombings of Indonesian churches.
In 2007, Hambali, 43, appeared before a preliminary military tribunal and denied any connection with al-Qaeda.
