[2] Noor Uthman Muhammaed is a citizen of Sudan who described working at the Khalden training camp, in Afghanistan, from the mid-1990s, until it was shut down in 2000.
Joint Task Force Guantanamo counter-terrorism analysts describe him as being a senior member of al Qaida's leadership cadre.
[6][7] Carol J. Williams, writing in the Los Angeles Times reports that all five men had been connected by Abu Zubaydah—one of the three captives the CIA has acknowledged was interrogated using the controversial technique known as "waterboarding".
On November 13, 2009, the Attorney General Eric Holder announced that Noor Uthman's case would continue in a military commission.
On September 21, 2010, Carol Rosenburg, again writing in the Miami Herald, reported that prosecutor Marine Major James Weirick[12] stated that "Noor Uthman Mohammed for a number of years was the principal trainer and in charge of all training at the Khalden training camp in Afghanistan that provided numerous individuals who went on to serve for al Qaida.
An additional complication was that the Washington DC Circuit Court of Appeals had overturned the sentences of two other captives who had pleaded guilty to the same change Noor pleaded to, as the charges barred the fundamental principle that no one should face charges for an act that was legal at the time they committed it, and that Noor too was likely to have his sentence overturned.