WASHINGTON: Attorney General Eric Holder announced Friday that five Guantanamo detainees with alleged ties to the 9/11 conspiracy, including accused mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, will be transferred to New York for trial in civilian court.

“KSM”, as he has come to be known, and his four co-defendants, Ramzi Bin Al-Shibh Walid bin Attash, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali and Mustafa Ahmed Al-Hawsawi, described themselves “as terrorists to the bone” in a filing before a military commission at Guantanamo in March. They have referred to their alleged involvement in the attacks as a “badge of honor.”

They will be transferred to the US District Court for the Southern District of New York — a short distance from the World Trade Center towers that were destroyed in the Sept. 11 attacks.

The decision is viewed as a key step by officials to close down Guantanamo Bay.

But the administration will prosecute another set of high-profile detainees — Abd Al-Rahim Al-Nashiri, who is accused of planning the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen, and four other detainees — Omar Khadr, Mohammed Kamin, Ibrahim Al-Qosi, Noor Uthman Muhammed — at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba before a military commission.

Asked about the decision during a news conference on his weeklong trip to Asia, President Barack Obama declined to comment directly, but said Mohammed would face justice.

“I’m absolutely convinced that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed will be subject to the most exacting demands of justice,” Obama told reporters Friday in Japan at a joint news conference with Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama. “The American people insist on it and my administration insists on it.”

Mohammed is the confessed organizer of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and the Pentagon. But his confession could be called into question during trial. A 2005 Justice Department memo — released by the Obama administration — revealed he had been water-boarded 183 times in March 2003.

US officials have acknowledged the use of harsh tactics, including water boarding.

Shortly after taking office, Obama shut down the previous administration’s military commissions. But in a speech at the National Archives in May, he announced that his administration was considering reviving some form of the panels, which have more flexible standards for handling evidence gathered in battlefield settings and through classified methods, to handle especially difficult prosecutions. He promised to make the commissions fairer with extra safeguards for defendants. Still, the prospect of giving different detainees different kinds of trials, based on where government officials think they can win convictions, has led to criticism by some human rights and civil liberties advocates.

Obama signed an executive order Jan. 22 to close the prison within a year. Since then, the administration has run into obstacles erected by lawmakers, including some Democrats, who are nervous about political implications of moving detainees to the US.

The deadline is expected to slip, administration officials have said, but plans to close the prison remain on track.

Adding to the difficulties of shutting down Guantanamo is that in almost every other place within the United States that the administration has talked about transferring prisoners, the local community has risen up through political leaders to say they did not want to take the inmates because they feared they could become targets for terrorism.

No detainee is being moved right away. Under a law Congress enacted earlier this year, lawmakers must be given 45 days notice before the executive branch moves any Guantanamo Bay detainee onto US soil.

The decision marks a milestone in the administration’s efforts to close the Guantanamo prison, something that Obama announced shortly after taking office he would do within a year, but which has proven difficult to achieve because of uncertainty about what to do with the detainees housed there.