A Red Cross delegation has met at Guantanamo Bay with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, and 13 other "high-value detainees," a Pentagon spokesman said Thursday.

Navy Lt. Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon said officials from the International Committee of the Red Cross met this week with 14 prisoners who had been transferred a few weeks earlier to the U.S. naval detention centre in Cuba — including Mohammed and the alleged architects of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole and the U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

"They have had access to the 14 high-value detainees at Guantanamo this week," Gordon said at the Pentagon.

Red Cross spokespeople in Washington and Geneva refused to comment, saying they would issue a statement in coming days. The Red Cross delegation arrived at Guantanamo on Sept. 25.

The encounter appears to be the first time the 14 detainees have met with anyone other than their captors since they were arrested, held in CIA custody at secret locations and then transferred to Guantanamo Bay.

U.S. President George W. Bush announced on Sept. 6 that they had been moved to Guantanamo Bay for trial.

Gordon declined to release details of the meetings but said they were the same as those the Red Cross has with any of the Guantanamo Bay detainees.

Some 460 people accused of being members or supporters of al-Qaeda or the Taliban  are held at the military prison on the sprawling U.S. base in southeast Cuba.

Army Brig. Gen. Edward A. Leacock, the deputy commander of Guantanamo, said in September that the 14 new detainees were being checked for medical and dental problems and were given materials to write letters, which would be handed over to the Red Cross for mailing after undergoing military censorship.

Authorities have said they are being held in a maximum-security area but refused to say precisely where.

The detainees reportedly underwent coercive interrogations while being held by the CIA. Bush, in his Sept. 6 speech, declined to disclose the techniques but denied they constituted torture.

The high-profile detainees include:

  • Mohammed, believed to have been the No. 3 al-Qaeda leader before he was captured in Pakistan in 2003.
  • Ramzi Binalshibh, accused of helping plan the Sept. 11 attacks and being a lead operative for a foiled plot to crash aircraft into London's Heathrow Airport.
  • Abu Zubaydah, who was believed to be a link between al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and many al-Qaeda cells before he was captured in Pakistan in 2002.