In the biggest trial of the age of terrorism, the professed 9/11 mastermind and four alleged henchmen will be hauled before a civilian court on U.S. soil, barely 1,000 yards from the site of the World Trade Center’s twin towers they are accused of destroying. Attorney General Eric Holder announced the decision yesterday to bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to trial at a lower Manhattan courthouse.

Many Americans likely were surprised, and perhaps even outraged, to learn of the comfortable conditions in which the enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay are kept. As a recent news article reported: “For up to four hours a day, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, can sit outside in the Caribbean sun and chat through a chain-link fence with the detainee in the neighboring exercise yard at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Mohammed can also use that time to visit a media room to watch movies of his choice, read newspapers and books, or play handheld electronic games. He and other detainees have access to elliptical machines and stationary bikes . . . .“

A military judge agreed Monday to another delay in the war crimes trial of five Guantanamo prisoners charged in the Sept. 11 attacks, giving U.S. officials more time to decide how to try them.

The family of one of the youngest prisoners ever held at Guantanamo plans to sue the U.S. government to compensate him for mistreatment and an adolescence lost to nearly seven years in a cell, his lawyers said Thursday.

Dozens of Guantanamo Bay detainee cases have been referred to federal prosecutors for possible criminal trials in the nation’s capital, Virginia and New York City, officials told The Associated Press

Brief comments on a variety of topics currently in the news . . . .

• With the Obama administration springing Guantanamo-housed terrorists and, e.g., funding Hamas-dominated Gaza to the tune of $900 million (etc.), how far we have come from George Bush’s admonition: “Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.“

President Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court and promptly left town. The preceding week hardly could go down as a high point for him or his administration—but maybe, in certain ways, as a period of personal growth. Time for a break. Think about it. The week had featured these items on an incomplete list, most related one way or another to national security:

President Barack Obama defended his decision to close the Guantanamo prison camp and promised to work with Congress to develop a system for imprisoning detainees who can’t be tried and can’t be turned loose.

The five Republicans in Virginia’s congressional delegation are urging Gov. Timothy M. Kaine to oppose the relocation of any Guantanamo Bay detainees to Virginia. “The relocation of detainees to Virginia would increase the risk of terrorist activity, require significant security increases at those facilities and cause unnecessary anxiety and unrest in the affected locality,“ says a letter to Kaine signed by Reps. J. Randy Forbes, R-4th; Frank R. Wolf, R-10th; Eric I. Cantor, R-7th; Robert W. Goodlatte, R-6th; and Robert J. Wittman, R-1st.

FBI Director Robert Mueller told Congress on Wednesday that bringing Guantanamo Bay detainees to the United States would pose a number of possible risks, even if the they were kept in maximum-security prisons.

Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., says he now disagrees with President Barack Obama’s timetable to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in January 2010. But Webb supports Obama’s idea of reviving military commissions to try some terror suspects now detained there. Webb, appearing on ABC’s “This Week” program, acknowledged that in January he said the president had established a reasonable timeline for closing the detention center.

“Human Rights Activists Troubled by Administration’s Approach,“ reported a Washington Post news story. The subject was not the Bush administration but its successor. The Obama administration has dismayed human rights groups by moving the issue to the back burner so it can focus on other priorities, such as climate change and improving America’s relationship with foreign dictatorships. The shift constitutes a sharp departure from the lofty rhetoric of the political campaign—as well as a shift from existing U.S. policy. As former Clinton administration staffer Jennifer Windsor put it, “There are some good people in the administration, but the instinct of abandoning everything President Bush has stood for has done a disservice” to the cause of human rights.

It will take several grueling months for the Obama administration to devise a new legal framework for counterterrorism. But there is one relatively minor measure the president can, should, and finally appears willing to adopt right now: an executive order granting temporary asylum to individuals who are wrongly detained but cannot be repatriated or resettled in other countries.

With the Obama administration’s plans to shut down the Camp Delta detention facility at Guantanamo Bay presumably moving forward apace, some detainees might end up in the commonwealth—perhaps in a detention facility in Northern Virginia to await trial there. Last week Virginia Reps. Eric Cantor, Frank Wolf, and Randy Forbes called on Gov. Tim Kaine to join them in opposing the idea of moving any detainees to any facility in Virginia.

A federal judge has ordered the release of a Guantanamo detainee who has been held since he was 14. He’s now 21. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ruled that the evidence presented against Mohammed el Gharani—testimony by other detainees—was not reliable. But suppose it is, and el Gharani engaged in hostilities against the U.S.—making him an enemy combatant. Should he be held in perpetuity?