Uthman Abdul Rahim Mohammed Uthman of Yemen is one of 48 detainees whom President Barack Obama has deemed too dangerous to ever be released, part of a group that former Vice President Dick Cheney called “the worst of the worst.”

 

But questions have surfaced about the case against Uthman, accused of being an al-Qaeda fighter and an Osama bin Laden bodyguard. The inadvertent release of classified material in court documents allowed ProPublica and others to review the evidence that the U.S. has on him, which includes testimony from two other detainees who were tortured—so much so that one of them killed himself at Guantánamo Bay and the other became psychotic.

 

On March 16, U.S. District Court Judge Henry H. Kennedy released a February opinion ordering Uthman’s release because the case against him was based on the unreliable testimony of the two tortured prisoners. But the next day, Kennedy’s opinion was removed from public view and replaced several weeks later by a censored version. The new version deleted information about the psychological state of the two detainee-witnesses, as well as details about government discrepancies relating to where he was seized.

-Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky

 

DOJ’s Troubled Case Against Uthman (by Dafna Linzer, ProPublica)

Key Deletions in the Uthman Trial Court Opinions (by Krista Kjellman Schmidt, ProPublica)

Uthman Abdul Rahim Mohammed Uthman (New York Times)