She said it would be wrong for anyone to jump to conclusions as she believed all stakeholders involved in this case were doing their best to expedite the trial.

“I know they are working also on (Indonesian terror suspect) Hambali’s case. Any delay due to Covid-19 is done in good faith.

“I was also informed that the trial will involve witnesses who will attend in person and also through teleconference, whichever they deem fit for the situation,” she told FMT.

The trial of Mohd Farik Amin and Mohammad Nazir Lep, together with the alleged Indonesian mastermind Hambali, was supposed to have started on Feb 22 but was postponed, with the US court citing the Covid-19 pandemic as the reason.

According to reports, the suspects were allegedly linked to the Bali bombings, in which 202 people were killed, and the 2003 bomb attack at the JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, which killed 12 people.

The Malaysians have also been implicated in a planned al-Qaeda plot to crash a hijacked plane into the 73-storey Library Tower/US Bank Tower in Los Angeles.

Asked whether the government would press for the return of the two to be tried here, Normah said it (the government) does not have any written policy on this issue.

“However, it is willing to accept Malaysian citizens regardless of their nature of crime, provided that their cases have gone through due processes in the country that they are being held,” she said.

On Sunday, counter-terrorism analyst Ahmad El-Muhammady, an assistant professor at the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilisation (Istac), urged the Biden administration not to use Covid-19 to further delay their trial as they have been in detention for nearly 20 years.

They are being held at Camp Delta in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, by the US.