Congratulations are in order for the Bush administration on the news that it will bring a capital case against six Guantanamo detainees for their roles in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. No doubt some will see the prosecution, before a military commission, as abusive. To us, though, the risks are worth it. The downside of the decision to use military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay is not for the accused, but for New Yorkers, who will be robbed of the chance to see the trials firsthand.

There was a time not too long ago, after all, when the Southern District of New York was a hub for prosecutions of terrorists. Ramzi Yousef was tried and convicted here for his role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman was tried and convicted here for his role in the so-called Landmarks Plot to bomb the Brooklyn Bridge. When America indicted Osama Bin Laden for his role in the bombing of the American embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, the case was brought in the Southern District of New York.

Those prosecutions were highly successful, but carried their own risks. In the case of Abdel-Rahman, known as the blind sheik, the court officer who was defending him, Lynne Stewart, herself came to be ajudged a felon, having, according to a federal jury, aided and abetted a terrorist conspiracy; she is appealing her conviction. But her case, and the guilty verdict brought in against a translator working with her, are reminders that there are — in civilian courts as well as military tribunals, in “peace” as well as in war — always risks. Good for the administration to proceed as it sees best.

The Defense Department is accusing Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarek Bin ‘Attash, Ramzi Binalshibh, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi, and Mohamed al Kahtani of killing New Yorkers by participating in the plot to attack the twin towers. But instead of turning them over to prosecution by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, or to the district attorney for New York County, the Defense Department wants to hold its own military trial — a decision that echoes the logic Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s followed in using military tribunals for the Nazi saboteurs who landed on Long Island.

It wouldn’t surprise us were the decision to avoid the venue of New York state courts to have been affected by the lack of a death penalty in the state. If the Defense Department wanted to have the trial in New York, no doubt a secure courtroom could be arranged in a federal courthouse, perhaps even one downtown a short walk from ground zero. The six individuals are charged with some of the worst crimes ever committed in America, and the justice that will be meted out to them — no matter where and by what authority it will be meted out — will be more appropriately handled by America than would be the case in any of the lands they came from.