Guantanamo Spy Cases Evaporate Into Thin Air
by John Mintz
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON, 25January 2004 — Last September, top officials of the Navy prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, told a military judge in Florida that the prison’s Muslim chaplain, Army Capt. James Yee, would soon be charged with mutiny, sedition, espionage, spying and aiding the enemy — crimes that could lead to his execution.
Based on those allegations, Yee was held in solitary confinement in a Navy brig in South Carolina for 76days. But authorities never charged him with any of those offenses. Instead, Yee will face much less serious charges, such as mishandling classified materials and adultery, when the case against him resumes at a hearing at Fort Benning, Ga., scheduled for Feb.4 .
At the same time Yee was being detained, Air Force Senior Airman Ahmad I. Halabi, who worked as an Arabic translator at Guantanamo Bay, was also in solitary confinement3 , 000miles away, held in California on charges of espionage and aiding the enemy. In time, the most serious of those allegations have been withdrawn as well. Some experts on military law and the men’s lawyers say the prosecutions of Yee and Halabi have been riddled with inconsistencies and oddities that cast doubt on the government’s original fears that a spy ring was operating in the high-security prison for alleged Al-Qaeda and Taleban fighters. “I find it difficult to believe professional prosecutors are proceeding with these two cases in this manner,” said Gary Solis, a former Marine Corps prosecutor who teaches the law of war at Georgetown University. “The ineptitude at each step of the proceeding is amazing. ... It seems there’s been investigative overreaction in both cases.”
Even now, prosecutors have not made final determinations that some of the documents Halabi was charged with possessing were, in fact, classified — and, if they were, what level of security applied to them. As a result, his lead civilian attorney, Donald G. Rehkopf Jr., said he has only a hazy picture of why his client was arrested last July. A similar review of documents in the Yee case was finished only in recent days.
In an unusual episode last month, military investigators raided offices used by Halabi’s military lawyers at an Air Force base in California, temporarily seizing one computer and copying its hard drive in a search for evidence against the airman.
Rehkopf protested the search in a letter to Air Force officials, calling it “bizarre” and “a conscious disregard of the attorney-client relationship.”
“We are imploring the senior leadership of the Air Force to get this case under control,” the letter said. The Air Force is refusing to comment on the case of the Syrian-born Halabi,25 , who is accused of illegally possessing letters from detainees and other documents about the prison at Guantanamo Bay. Officials at the US Southern Command, which oversees Guantanamo Bay, have commented on Yee. They say they are demonstrating caution and fairness in their treatment of him. “We’ve taken a methodical, well-thought-out approach in the case against Chaplain Yee,” said Col. Bill Costello, a Southern Command spokesman.
Yee, who graduated from West Point and converted to Islam, faces two counts of mishandling classified material related to papers found on him when he was arrested in Florida after a flight from Guantanamo Bay last Sept.10 . He also has been charged with failing to obey an order or regulation; making a false official statement; conduct unbecoming an officer, for downloading pornographic material onto his laptop computer; and adultery with a female officer at Guantanamo Bay.
Halabi was originally charged last summer with 30 offenses, including espionage, aiding the enemy and other allegations based on searches of his Guantanamo Bay computer. But in the fall, 13 charges were dropped, including the most serious ones, which could have led to the death penalty. He still faces charges of mishandling classified material and attempted espionage involving an alleged plan, apparently never carried out, to pass information to someone in Syria. Two other men have been charged with breaching Guantanamo Bay security. Ahmed F. Mehalba, a Muslim linguist who worked as a prison contractor, faces charges in a federal court of lying to investigators and mishandling classified data after secret files about the prison were found on his computer when he landed at Boston’s Logan International Airport on a flight from Egypt. Army Reserve Col. Jack Farr, a senior officer in the unit that interrogates detainees, was charged in November with mishandling classified material and lying to investigators after he flew to Florida and classified papers were found in his bags.
