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ISLAMABAD, Sunday (Reuters)-After a decade on the run, the suspected mastermind of the September 11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was in U.S. custody on Sunday in what U.S. officials hailed as the biggest catch so far in the global war on terror.

Arrested by plainclothes Pakistani security agents who raided a house in the central city of Rawalpindi in a pre-dawn raid on Saturday, Mohammed was branded by Washington as one of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's "most senior and significant lieutenants".

Mohammed, whose arrest is a coup for the United States in its hunt for bin Laden and its global war on terror, was handed over to U.S. custody and taken to an undisclosed location within hours of his arrest, a senior government source said on Sunday. "He was handed over soon after the arrest," the source said.

It was not known whether the man described by counterterrorism experts as having been behind almost every major terror attack in the last decade had been taken to Afghanistan, a military base in Cuba where other suspected al Qaeda are held, a U.S. ship or flown to the United States or a third country.

The White House said Mohammed, one of three al Qaeda suspects detained in the early morning swoop, was "a key al Qaeda planner and the mastermind of the September 11 attacks".

Officials said the others were a Pakistani and a foreign national of Arab origin. "The United States commends Pakistani and U.S. authorities on the completion of a successful joint operation, which resulted in the detention of several al Qaeda operatives," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said in a statement.

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