NEW YORK — U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday he still believes Manhattan is the right place to put the self-professed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks on trial but he won’t revisit the decision to have the man’s fate decided by a military tribunal instead.

Holder commented on the case against Khalid Sheik Mohammed during a visit to New York to congratulate the trial team that last week won a conviction of Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, who is Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law and was al-Qaida’s spokesman after the 2001 attacks.

The attorney general said it was fitting that Abu Ghaith, “who publicly gloated about the attacks on the World Trade Center, stood trial near where those buildings once stood; before a jury of New Yorkers, and in full view of many of those who lost loved ones in the attack.”

He added: “This verdict has proven beyond any doubt that proceedings such as these can safely occur in the city I am proud to call home, as in other locations across our great nation.”

But he said at a news conference that the success of the Abu Ghaith prosecution did not mean Mohammed could be moved to New York for a civilian trial.

“The time has passed for that determination,” Holder said. “This is not a decision that we are going to revisit.”

In November 2009, Holder announced that Mohammed would be tried in Manhattan courts. He reversed the decision in April 2011 amid rising political opposition and claims by city officials that a trial would damage the local economy and require hundreds of millions of dollars to boost security.

On Tuesday, Holder said he based his decision to announce Mohammed would be tried in New York on the recommendations of prosecutors in New York and the Eastern District of Virginia.

“I think the decision I announced at that time was a correct one,” Holder said. “Many of the problems that we’re now seeing in the military commissions were predicted in the papers that I reviewed that helped shape my decision.”