In an interview with the financial news network CNBC on Friday, Bush said he had yet to see the recently released film of the uprising, a dramatic portrayal of events on the United Airlines plane before it crashed in a Pennsylvania field.

But he said he agreed with the description of David Beamer, whose son Todd died in the crash, who in a Wall Street Journal commentary last month called it "our first successful counterattack in our homeland in this new global war - World War III".

Bush said, "I believe that. I believe that it was the first counterattack to World War III.

"It was, it was unbelievably heroic of those folks on the airplane to recognise the danger and save lives," he said.

Flight 93 crashed on the morning of September 11, 2001, killing the 33 passengers, seven crew members and four hijackers, after passengers stormed the cockpit and battled the hijackers for control of the aircraft.

The President has repeatedly praised the heroism of the passengers in fighting back and so launching the first blow of what he usually calls the "war on terror".

In 2002, then-White House spokesman Ari Fleischer explicitly declined to call the hunt for Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda group and its followers World War III.

Raskin's colleague David Novak went further: "They're going to face justice, just like this defendant does, when their interrogation time is over."

But neither Raskin nor Novak said specifically where these enemy combatants would face justice - U.S. civilian courts or military tribunals or elsewhere.

"The successful conclusion of the Moussaoui trial reaffirms that even those in military detention may at some point by tried in a civilian court," Georgetown University law professor Viet Dinh said in an interview. That option was bolstered by "the way they found to protect the rights of the defendant and the government's interest in keeping some secrets," added the former top Justice Department official.

But speaking Friday to European counterparts in Austria, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales wasn't just keeping the civilian court option open.

"There are cases in which our criminal justice system is the appropriate way to deliver justice," Gonzales said. "But there also are instances in which the national security of the United States requires a military response ... such as detaining enemy combatants and making use of military commissions."

Some doubt the Moussaoui experience will open the courtroom door for other terrorists.

Bill Goodman, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has arranged lawyers for enemy combatants detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, dismissed the promises of Raskin and Novak as mere "lawyer talk."

"They have no idea what's going to happen to those people," Goodman said.

Goodman believes Moussaoui's trial "shows civilian courts are absolutely equipped" to handle terrorist cases. The Bush administration's military commissions, just beginning trial work at Guantanamo, fail to protect defendants' rights, he said. The legitimacy of those commissions is before the Supreme Court, expected to rule before July.

But Goodman doubts the government wants to use civilian courts for terrorists because U.S. judges wouldn't stand for the abuse allegedly used to extract confessions from al-Qaida operatives. Confessions obtained under torture or many forms of duress are inadmissible in U.S. courts.

For instance, Mohamed al-Qahtani, the "20th hijacker" who missed participating in the Sept. 11 attacks, confessed to his role only after he was threatened with dogs, forced to wear a bra and a thong, and interrogated 18 to 20 hours a day for over a month, according to a military investigation. More extreme techniques have allegedly been used against Shaikh Mohammed.

"The conditions and circumstances of their secret detention and the question of whether they have been tortured would make a trial in civilian court very difficult," said Lawrence Barcella, a longtime federal prosecutor now in private practice.

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, who presided over Moussaoui's trial, said the experience proved civilian courts can solve problems posed by unruly defendants, records that number over a million documents, and the government's need to keep some evidence secret.

Many had questioned "whether this case should have been tried (at all), whether it should have been tried in this courthouse ... or ... in a military tribunal," Brinkema noted.

Trial lawyers "had to work around classification issues that were at one point, we all thought, insurmountable," she said. Yet "this evidence was able to be brought together in a format and presented openly in a public court of law."

One issue that threatened to derail the trial was how to accommodate Moussaoui's right to call captured enemy combatants to testify in his defense. An appeals court agreed with the government that bringing them to court or even allowing Moussaoui's lawyers to question them would endanger national security. Defense lawyers were forced to rely on summaries distilled from their interrogations.

Prosecutors and defense lawyers also crafted declassified substitutes for some documents and even showed the jury two secret documents that weren't read aloud or put in the public record.

Dinh said the case of Jose Padilla shows that military detainees can still end up in civilian courtrooms. Once accused of plotting to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" in a U.S. city after the Sept. 11 attacks, Padilla - a U.S. citizen arrested in Chicago - was held in a military prison without charges for 3 1/2 years. Last year, he was transferred to civilian court to face less sensational charges of helping provide recruits, money and supplies to Islamic extremists worldwide.

Whether other detainees follow Padilla into court will depend on what procedures were used in their detention and how much evidence prosecutors were able to obtain independently of the interrogations, Dinh said.

Andreas Mavrommatis of Cyprus, who chaired the session, praised the United States for its "unique contribution" in promoting human rights around the world, but said it has an obligation to be above reproach.

He said he could understand that intelligence matters needed careful treatment, "but they are not excluded" from scrutiny.

"If during intelligence activities there is a violation of the convention, it's our duty to investigate them and your duty to answer," Mavrommatis said.

State Department legal adviser John B. Bellinger III, leading the U.S. delegation in its first appearance before the committee in six years, insisted the U.S. government felt an "absolute commitment to upholding our national and international obligations to eradicate torture."

The committee submitted questions in advance to the U.S. government that covered such matters such as alleged secret
CIA prisons and the "rendition" or transfer of terror suspects to other countries, where they allegedly could face torture.

Bellinger told reporters later that it was "an absurd allegation" to suggest that any U.S. intelligence flight in Europe might be carrying a detainee, because many carry analysts, officials and forensic information. But he added that it wasn't proper to provide details on intelligence activities.

The U.S. delegation told the committee, the U.N.'s watchdog for a 22-year-old treaty forbidding prisoner abuse, that mistakes had occurred in the U.S. treatment of detainees in the war against terrorism and 29 detainees in U.S. facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan had died of what appeared to be abuse or other violations of U.S. law.

U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Charles Stimson said a total of 120 detainees have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, but none had died at Guantanamo. Most of the deaths resulted from natural causes, battlefield injuries or attacks by other detainees, he said.

In the cases of the 29 deaths from suspected abuse, Stimson said, "these alleged violations were properly investigated and appropriate action taken."

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights Barry Lowenkron said the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib "sickened the American people - just as they appalled people around the world. They were inexcusable, they were indefensible."

The U.S. conducted more than 600 criminal investigations into allegations of mistreatment and more than 250 people had been held accountable for abusing detainees, Lowenkron said.

But Fernando Marino Menendez of spain cited Human Rights Watch as claiming that only a small number received prison sentences.

The United States is taking its turn as one of the 141 signatories to the Convention Against Torture in submitting to a periodic review by the 10 independent members of the committee.

The White House released transcripts of the interview on Sunday.

Bush said the administration was waiting for a ruling from the Supreme Court on whether the detainees "need to have a fair trial in a civilian court or in a military court."

He admitted that the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad, where Iraqi prisoners were abused by U.S. soldiers in late 2003 and early 2004, was a disgrace for the country, but added that people "ought to take a look at what happened afterwards."

The United States has been accused by human rights groups of mistreating detainees at Guantanamo and criticized for their indefinite detention.

The United States opened the prison on its Navy base in Guantanamo in January 2002, and about 480 prisoners are still being held there. Only 10 of them have been charged by the military tribunals, and no verdicts have been issued so far.