The highly anticipated New York trial of Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law could be delayed because his court-appointed lawyers have been hit by US budget cuts, they said Monday.

Federal Judge Lewis Kaplan called the revelation that a package of US federal government cuts known as the sequester could imperil a start to the trial this year “stunning.”

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Martin Cohen, an attorney for Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, allegedly a senior propagandist in the Al-Qaeda network, said he doubted he could be ready by Kaplan’s suggested trial date in September.

“The lawyers for the federal defenders are to be furloughed for five-and-a-half weeks,” he told a hearing, saying it would be “very difficult to be ready for September.”

Cohen suggested a January date for the trial as an alternative.

Kaplan said it was “extremely troublesome to contemplate the possibility of a case of this nature being delayed because of sequestration.”

Abu Ghaith has pleaded not guilty to conspiring to kill US nationals.

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He was brought in and out of the Manhattan court with his hands cuffed behind his back and wearing a blue prison smock. He did not speak during the hearing, but listened to proceedings through an English-to-Arabic interpreter.

Defense lawyers also queried whether the bearded former comrade of the late Bin Laden could get a fair jury trial in a courthouse just a few blocks from the site of the World Trade Center, where nearly 3,000 people died in the September 11, 2001 Al-Qaeda attacks.

Cohen said his team was considering asking Kaplan to move the trial elsewhere because of “the prejudicial nature of the trial in New York.”

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Asked later by journalists if a fair trial was possible, Cohen said: “These are questions that we’re mulling over.”

Once a trial does get underway, it could take as much as five weeks, with up to four weeks spent on the prosecution case, lawyers for both sides told the court.