Pictures of suspected 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed posing for prayer at Guantánamo surfaced on the Web Wednesday -- a startling look at him just days before the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

In the photo, Mohammed, 44, looks fit, with a massive, bushy, gray-speckled beard covering the chest of his white prison camp uniform. He is kneeling, clutching prayer beads in a photo taken in July by the International Committee of the Red Cross, under an agreement with the Pentagon that lets ICRC delegates send photos to detainees' families.

Al Qaeda expert Jarret Brachman, former research director at the Combating Terrorism Center of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, said he was alerted to the images by a counter-terror colleague in Australia.

RECRUITING TOOL?

He lamented their appearance ``both in terms of their timing and their content'' -- on the virtual eve of the anniversary of 9/11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people -- and warned they could serve as an al Qaeda recruiting tool.

Brachman acknowledged that it is rightfully the Red Cross' role to demonstrate to the captives' families ``that they are alive and not being mistreated.

``But the last thing that Americans want to see on the 9/11 anniversary are pictures of the attack's alleged mastermind looking peaceful and healthy,'' he said.

The photos also appear while the Obama administration is deciding whether to move the trial of the five alleged 9/11 co-conspirators, now held at Guantánamo, to a civilian judge and jury in federal court.

The five now face Pentagon conspiracy and mass murder charges at the Guantánamo war court. They allegedly plotted, financed and helped the 19 hijackers reach U.S. soil -- and have submitted a written admission to the military commission that says they welcome martyrdom.

The pre-Ramadan photo of Mohammed is the first public picture of the alleged arch-terrorist since his widely circulated March 2003 capture photo.

The 2003 photo, in stark contrast to the new image, shows him after Pakistani security forces in Rawalpindi rousted him from sleep -- in a T-shirt, with messy hair and in need of a shave -- and before they turned him over to the CIA for interrogations that reportedly included 183 episodes of waterboarding.

`DEFEATED MONSTER'

The earlier capture photo portrayed a ``defeated monster to most of the world, thanks to that single image,'' said Brachman. ``Now, these photos present him as a pious, serene and thoughtful man. They will be invariably used by the al Qaeda movement for propaganda.''

At Guantánamo, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brook DeWalt said other detainees' Red Cross photos had already reached the Web. So commanders recognized their origins when they appeared on the counterterror websites.

Two other photos showed Mohammed's 32-year-old nephew, Pakistani-born Ammar al Baluchi, on a prayer rug, cross-legged and clutching prayer beads -- but with a typical Afghan tribesman cap on his head. He is also well-groomed, seated on a prayer rug and wearing typical Guantánamo-issue slide-on blue rubber sneakers.

Red Cross photos of the detainees first began circulating in public in May, after Red Cross delegates began sending them to the captives' family members.

In all, 107 Guantánamo detainees have agreed to be photographed at the prison camps, said ICRC spokesman Bernard Barrett.

`HIGH-VALUE'

But these are the first known images from among the 15 ``high-value detainees'' in the custody of Task Force Platinum, a Guantánamo unit that segregates former CIA captives who were earlier held for years in secret overseas ``black sites'' -- out of reach of the Red Cross.

Camp 7 captives are held apart from the other 210 war-on-terror captives so they cannot describe their CIA treatment, or where they were held.

Barrett said Red Cross delegates take a series of photos of Guantánamo captives who agree to pose for them, then let each captive choose his two favorite images. They are made into prints and sent to their families in routine Red Cross messages, which are censored by the U.S. military as part of the Pentagon's security procedures.

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