The federal court complex in lower Manhattan has no phone service or computer network and is just blocks from the ruins of the World Trade Center. But behind locked doors, hearings are being conducted in the case of America's deadliest terror attack.
Just a few courtrooms in the complex are functional. Armed federal agents patrol the grounds, and the heavily fortified buildings are open only to court employees and lawyers. Steel barricades designed to stop trucks going 130kph are set up.
Trials have been suspended. The few hearings that take place include the cases of four men arrested on material-witness warrants in connection with the terrorism investigation.
Investigators believe that the men have links to the suicide hijackers and that they may flee. Holding them allows investigators to secure their testimony before a grand jury.
Court sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed that some of the men made appearances before US District Judge Michael Mukasey, the court's chief judge.
Mukasey has been under constant armed protection since 1993, when he began presiding over the case of Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, a blind Egyptian cleric, and his followers.
The sheik was tried in 1995 and sentenced to life in prison for conspiring to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and blow up five New York City landmarks, including the UN.
Mukasey made a return to the bench Thursday in a sealed courtroom. It was unclear what the proceedings were about. Earlier in the week, he said that no grand juries had been able to convene in Manhattan since the attack and it was unclear when they could.
He extended deadlines for all court cases by 30 days, saying "extraordinary circumstances exist and that delay is indispensable to the interests of justice."
On Wednesday, two reporters were told to leave Mukasey's courtroom before he presided over one of the hearings.
Allowed to remain were two court-appointed defense attorneys, as well as two prosecutors long involved in a continuing investigation of Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda terrorist group.
One of the prosecutors, Kenneth Karas, just completed a case resulting in the conviction of four men in the 1998 bombing of two US embassies in Africa -- an attack allegedly ordered by bin Laden, who is also the prime suspect in last week's attacks.
Andrew Patel, one of the defense lawyers in the closed hearing, declined to comment afterward.
The material witnesses held so far could testify before a federal grand jury that was convened last week in White Plains, New York, to investigate the Sept. 11 attack.
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