GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- Another alleged senior al Qaeda captive -- once held secretly by the CIA -- has been transferred to this remote Navy base, the military said Friday.

The CIA director, Air Force Gen. Michael V. Hayden, told staff through a message announcing the transfer that Mohammud Rahim, an Afghan, was a "tough, seasoned jihadist."

His transfer to military custody raised to 16 the census of so-called ''high-value detainees'' in U.S. custody here in southeast Cuba. He was being held at a segregation site called Camp 7, off-limits to most prison guards and all but 16 of the 280 or so enemy combatants held at this interrogation and detention center.

A Pentagon spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, described Rahim as a ''high-level member of al Qaeda captured in the war on terror.''

''Prior to his arrival at Guantánamo, he was held in CIA custody,'' said Gordon, who referred to the intelligence agency questions about where he was held and his age.

The CIA said Rahim was captured in 2007.

Gordon said the latest addition to the prison camps population of about 280 captives "was a close associate of Osama bin Laden and had ties to al Qaeda organizations through the Middle East.''

He also called him one of bin Laden's "most trusted facilitators and procurement specialists.''

According to Hayden, the detainee sought chemicals for one attack on U.S. forces in Afghanistan, and tried to recruit individuals with access to American military facilities there.

Hayden said that in 2001, as the terrorist haven in Afghanistan was collapsing, Rahim first helped prepare Tora Bora as a hideout, then was part of the operation as bin Laden evaded U.S. forces in the remote mountainous region.

The Afghan joins better known former CIA-held prisoners as Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the reputed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, and a Palestinian captive called Abu Zubaydah who once ran a rival training camp to bin Laden's in Afghanistan.

The agency has confirmed it subjected those two men and a third to waterboarding while in CIA custody, prior to their September 2006 transfer to Pentagon custody.

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