Jabran Al-Qahtani - Charges Before A Military Commission

Charges Before A Military Commission

On November 7, 2005, the United States charged Jabran and four other detainees. The Bush administration intends to prosecute these detainees before a military commission. Qahtani, Sufyian Barhoumi, Binyam Ahmed Muhammad, and Ghassan Abdullah al Sharbi face conspiracy to murder charges. Omar Khadr faces both murder and conspiracy to murder charges.

Al Qahtani, Barhoumi and Al Sharbi have been dubbed "The Faisalabad Three". The three were captured together with a senior member of the al Qaeda leadership, Abu Zubaydah, in a safehouse in Faisalabad, Pakistan. The three are believed to have been members of Zubaydah's entourage. All three keep insisting they want to defend themselves.

In Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, in July 2006, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the Bush Presidency lacked the constitutional authority to set up the military commissions. Only Congress had the authority to set up military commissions. Congress subsequently passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

Al Qahtani was re-charged in the winter of 2008.

On 21 October 2008 charges were dropped against Al Qahtani and four other captives, Binyam Mohamed, Ghassan al Sharbi, Sufyian Barhoumi, and Noor Uthman Muhammed.

On 21 October 2008 Susan J. Crawford the official in charge of the Office of Military Commissions announced charges were dropped against Binyam and four other captives, Jabran al Qahtani, Ghassan al Sharbi, Sufyian Barhoumi, and Noor Uthman Muhammed. 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".

Williams quoted the men's attorneys, who anticipated the five men would be re-charged in thirty days. They told Williams that: "... prosecutors called the move procedural", and attributed it to the resignation of fellow Prosecutor Darrel Vandeveld, who resigned on ethical grounds. Williams reported that Clive Stafford Smith speculated that the Prosecution's dropping of the charges, and plans to subsequently re-file charges later was intended to counter and disarm the testimony Vandeveld was anticipated to offer, that the Prosecution had withheld exculpatory evidence.