Photo of 9/11 mastermind at Guantanamo Bay released

A new image showing the alleged September 11 mastermind at Guantanamo Bay has surfaced just days before the eighth anniversary of the terrorist attacks.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: A new image showing the alleged September 11 mastermind at Guantanamo Bay has surfaced just days before the eighth anniversary of the terrorist attacks.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, left, as he was in 2003, and right, a picture allegedly taken in July this year Credit: Photo: AP

Several pictures of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed were reportedly taken by Red Cross delegates at the secret Camp 7 inside the detention centre at the US naval base in Cuba.

The first photos of him for more than six years show him looking healthy, heavily bearded and apparently about to pray.

Mohammed, 44, is shown on his knees on a prison issue prayer mat, clutching prayer beads.

He is wearing a red-checked turban and appears to have made a prayer cloak from a bed sheet.

Media access to the camp is forbidden and the two pictures of Mohammed are the first to appear since the widely circulated photo of him on his arrest in March 2003.

In that, he appeared tired, unshaven and dishevelled, with bloodshot eyes and messy hair, before Pakistani security forces handed him to the CIA.

The new pictures, which include some of Mohammed's nephew, Ammar al Baluchi, were taken in July under an agreement with camp staff that allows the Red Cross to photograph detainees and send prints of their two favourite photos to family members.

Counter-terrorism experts expressed concern that such pictures were being used to fuel support for al-Qaeda.

Leah Farrall, a former terrorism expert with the Australian federal police, said she first noticed one of the photographs a week ago on an Internet forum that al-Qaeda has used to communicate messages.

She said it has since “gone viral” with some users posting online statements of support for Mohammed.

"’We’ll come and get you’ is one message that I saw,” she said.

The US government is still debating whether to try Mohammed and his four co-defendants in a federal court or in the new military commissions created in response to the 9/11 terror attacks.