Hearings set for "high-value" Guantanamo inmates

By Andrew Grey

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. military officials will start hearings on Friday for 14 prisoners transferred to Guantanamo Bay from secret CIA jails, including the alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks on the United States.

Reporters will not be allowed at the hearings at the prison camp in Cuba and will have to rely on edited transcripts, defence officials said on Tuesday, citing concerns that the suspects could reveal sensitive security information.

"I think everybody recognizes that these individuals are unique for the role that they have played in terrorist operations and in combat operations against U.S. forces," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters.

A rights group condemned the hearings, which are also closed to defence lawyers, as "sham tribunals" and complained that they could consider evidence obtained through coercion.

The 14 suspects were transferred to Guantanamo Bay from overseas CIA prisons in September.

They include Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the September 11 attacks, and an Indonesian man known as Hambali, who is accused of planning the 2002 bombings that killed more than 200 people in Bali, Indonesia.

The Pentagon also announced that the latest annual reviews of every detainee's case had identified 55 inmates who could be transferred to their home countries.

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