Noor Uthman Muhammed is a citizen of Sudan who was confined in the United States Guantanamo Bay detention camp, in Cuba where he served a sentence for terrorism convictions before the Guantanamo military commission The Department of Defense reports that Muhammed was born in Kassala, Sudan. Background 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. He first worked as a small-arms instructor, but after a few months of discontent he asked for a transfer. Instead, Noor Uthman Muhammad was assigned as Khalden training camp's quartermaster. He was responsible for the collection and distribution of camp supplies, such as food, water and firewood. He denies membership in al Qaida or the Taliban, and described the Khalden camp as being an independent camp. Joint Task Force Guantanamo counter-terrorism analysts describe him as being a senior member of al Qaida's leadership cadre. Noor Uthman Muhammaed was captured in Abu Zubaydah's house in Faisalabad on March 24, 2002, along with Abu Zubaydah, Sufyian Barhoumi, Ghassan al-Shirbi, Jabran Al Qahtani and several other suspects. Three of the other captives captured in that house were to face charges before the Guantanamo military commissions in 2005 and 2006. Charges Noor Uthman Muhammed was charged with conspiracy and providing support to terrorists on May 23, 2008. On October 21, 2008, Susan J. Crawford the official in charge of the Office of Military Commissions announced charges were being dropped against Noor Uthman and four other captives: Jabran al Qahtani, Ghassan al Sharbi, Sufyian Barhoumi, and Binyam Mohamed. 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. The current charges against Noor Uthman were instated on December 5, 2008.