Jabran bin al Qahtani is a Saudi in his late 20s with a graduate degree in engineering from King Saud University in Saudi Arabia. He was initially charged with conspiracy before the military commissions on December 16, 2005, but those charges were thrown out when the US Supreme Court ruled in June 2006 that the military commissions were unlawful. In September 2006, Congress passed the Military Commissions Act, authorizing a new set of military commissions.

On May 29, 2008, al Qahtani was re-charged before the new military commissions, accused of conspiracy to commit terrorism and providing material support for terrorism. The US alleged that al Qahtani left Saudi Arabia shortly after September 11, 2001 and received arms training in Afghanistan and Pakistan, eventually learning to build electronic remote detonation devices for explosives. The government claims that he was planning to return to Afghanistan when US and Pakistani forces arrested him and several other suspects in a raid on March 28, 2002 in Faisalabad, Pakistan.

On October 21, 2008, the United States withdrew the charges against al Qahtani and four others, saying it would probably refile new charges in the future. The announcement came in the wake of the resignation of Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld, one of the prosecutors on his case, who said that the military commissions did not have a proper system in place to provide exculpatory evidence to the defense. The US government re-filed charges in January 2009. 

Military Commissions Documents:

• General Information Page
• Charges Sworn - May 29, 2008
• Documents related to previous charges
  

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