Attorney General Eric Holder is taking a calculated risk in moving the terror trials of Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his four alleged co-conspirators to a Manhattan federal court but, all in all, he made a good decision. The man believed to be responsible for the murder of 3,000 innocents should be tried fairly, with appropriate precautions, but in public, where the crime was committed.

The trial will take place only a few blocks from where the World Trade Center stood until Sept. 11, 2001. Many people, including 40 percent of New Yorkers polled by the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, believe it increases the likelihood of another attack on New York.

Anyone can understand their apprehension, after living through the other-worldly nightmare of 9/11, but the fact is that New York is already a target. We know that from 9/11, and from the reported planned attack on city commuter trains that authorities broke up only two months ago. We live in a world at risk. New York is a city at risk. Shrinking from it won’t make anyone safer.

Plainly, there are precautions that need to be taken. During the trial, especially, security will have to be high. The court will have to be careful about testimony that reveals too much information to the wrong ears. And, yes, guilty verdicts could make New York a target, but so could guilty verdicts rendered at a military tribunal.

It’s always tempting to seek what appears to be the safer course after a trauma like the 2001 terror attacks. But the safety of a military tribunal is false. If anything, greater safety could come from trying and punishing the guilty according to our own rules of criminal justice.

Americans never want to see an attack like 9/11 on New York or Washington or any other city, again. But we already know our cities are targets for fanatics within Islam. That’s the reality we have to deal with, and it has nothing to do with where Khalid Sheik Mohammed stands before the bar of justice.