As reported in the latest edition of Newsweek and in the British newspaper the Daily Express, Robert Shaler, who headed the city's Department of Forensic Biology, said he promised the relatives of the Sept. 11 victims that he would try to keep the remains of the terrorists and their victims separate.

"They did not want the terrorists mixed in with their loved ones," Shaler told Newsweek, adding that the families said, "These people were criminals and did not deserve to be with them."

So far 13 of the 19 hijackers, four from the World Trade Center, and nine more from the Pentagon and Pennsylvania crash have been identified, Newsweek reports.

The Newsweek piece details that effort, and the question of what should be done with the hijackers' remains.

The terrorists' remains are being stored in secret locations New York and Virginia -- less than 24 pounds of flesh and bone fragments.

They're being "stored as evidence in a refrigerated locker in sealed containers and test tubes, FBI spokesman Richard Kolko told the news magazine.

Shaler and his successors used a combination of innovative DNA-mapping techniques, assistance from the FBI's crime lab and luck, Newsweek reported, to sift through the World Trade Center debris, which was brought to a staging area at the former Fresh Kills landfill.

"It's probably a concern with Fresh Kills, that terrorists' remains are mixed in with the victims' remains," said Dennis McKeon, a Great Kills resident who helped start the Staten Island-based Sept. 11 victims group Where-To-Turn.

Still, McKeon said, "The overall feeling of the 9/11 families is identifying their loved ones."

McKeon said he's not sure what should become of the hijackers remains, but he's "more concerned about identifying and giving remains back to (victims') families.

Albert Petrocelli of Huguenot, whose son, Mark, was killed in the attacks, said the news of the effort might not sit well with some relatives of the more than 1,100 victims whose remains have never been identified.

Petrocelli said he's received 19 different pieces of his son's remains, over five different intervals. "But we are the lucky of the unlucky," he told the Advance last night.

He "wouldn't want to be" hearing news about the hijackers' remains if he was a family member of someone whose remains haven't been found, likening their plight to the relatives of the families of a soldier missing in action in Vietnam.

"It's like telling me you found Viet Cong," he said.