The US military said Wednesday that it would soon determine if alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other 13 key terror suspects are "enemy combatants."

Hearings are to be held in three months for the 14 key detainees who had recently been transferred from secret CIA custody to US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Phil Waddingham, director of the Office for the Administrative Review of the Detention of Enemy Combatants, was quoted by US media as saying.

It will be the first known appearance of the 14 after they have been detained in secret places around the world for several years.

Waddingham said the detainees could refuse to appear at the hearings, but the hearings were to proceed anyway.

He said all Guantanamo detainees would go through the review process and if determined to be "enemy combatants," they would be detained and deprived of the rights as prisoners of war.

Otherwise, they will be handed over to the authorities of their home countries.

The Guantanamo facility was set up in 2002 to jail those captured in the Afghanistan war in 2001 and other terror suspects.

Some 450 prisoners remain at the prison at present and 120 of them are eligible to be released or transferred to home countries. 

(Xinhua News Agency September 21, 2006)