WASHINGTON, Sept 6: President George Bush acknowledged on Wednesday the CIA has run a secret detention program for terrorism suspects overseas and said 14 of those held have been transferred to the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay for prosecution by military commissions he hopes the US Congress will establish.

Among the 14, Mr Bush said, are the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, Khalid Sheik Mohammed and two other Al Qaeda leaders, Ramzi Binalshibh and Abu Zubaydah.

“As soon as Congress acts to authorise the military commissions I have proposed, the men our intelligence officials believe orchestrated the deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans on Sept. 11, 2001, can face justice,” Mr Bush said.

With human rights organisations suspicious about a program that has remained in the shadows, Mr Bush defended the detention and questioning of terrorism suspects through this method and said the CIA treats them humanely and does not torture.

“Were it not for this program, our intelligence community believes that al Qaeda and its allies would have succeeded in launching another attack against the American homeland. By giving us information about terrorist plans we could not get anywhere else, this program has saved innocent lives,” Mr Bush said in a White House speech nearly five years after the Sept. 11 attacks. The Bush administration has been forced to come up with a new method to try foreign terrorist suspects after the Supreme Court in June rejected the military tribunal system set up by Washington to try Guantanamo prisoners, most of whom were captured in Afghanistan.—Reuters