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WASHINGTON The Obama administration is preparing to transfer a military detainee in Afghanistan for criminal trial in Virginia, U.S. officials said Thursday.

The move would mark the first time a military detainee from Afghanistan was brought to the U.S. for trial, and it represents the Obama administration's latest attempt to show that it can use the criminal court system to deal with terror suspects.

The prisoner, known by the nom de guerre Irek Hamidullan, is a Russian veteran of the Soviet war in Afghanistan who defected to the Taliban and stayed in the country, U.S. officials said. He was captured in 2009 after an attack on Afghan border police and U.S. soldiers in Khost province, officials said.

He has been held at the U.S. Parwan detention facility at Bagram airfield ever since. He faces up to life in prison on several charges relating to the 2009 attack, and is expected to be tried in one of the federal courthouses in the Eastern District of Virginia. Prosecutors in that office have experience with high-profile terror prosecutions, including that of Sept. 11, 2001, conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, who is serving life without parole.

The congressional and administration officials who discussed the matter would do so only on condition of anonymity because it remained classified. Congress was notified Friday that a prisoner was going to be transferred for trial, but lawmakers were given few details, several congressional aides said.

In a statement late Thursday, National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan said, "We can confirm that a detainee at the Parwan detention facility in Afghanistan will be transferred to law enforcement custody and will be brought to the United States for trial."

Meehan would not confirm Hamidullan's identity but said the decision to transfer the detainee was made in light of the agreement by the U.S. that it will turn over all prisons in Afghanistan to the Afghan government by 2015. As of of last month there were 13 non-Afghan detainees at Parwan, and the Obama administration is facing pressure to transfer those detainees before December, when the U.S.-led NATO combat mission ends.

"The president's national security team examined this matter and unanimously agreed that prosecution of this detainee in federal court was the best disposition option in this case," she said.

The move is likely to spark criticism from Republican lawmakers, many of whom believe that military detainees should only be tried in military courts, and that criminal prosecutions of terror suspects undermine the notion that the U.S. is at war with al-Qaida and other extremists.

Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said giving the detainee full legal rights "is a slap in the face to the men and women fighting abroad to keep us safe."

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Obama administration to transfer Afghan detainee to US