A defense attorney filed legal papers yesterday rebutting the U.S. military’s contention that it never accused Army Capt. James J. Yee, a Muslim chaplain, of being a spy.
Eugene Fidell, the officer’s civilian attorney, cited a confidential confinement order submitted by military prosecutors last summer that accused Capt. Yee of spying and espionage.
The latest volley in a case that has become embarrassing for the military came as Mr. Fidell on Sunday appealed a nonjudicial punishment meted out to his client for adultery and storing pornography on his government computer.
The attorney augmented that appeal with a new filing, which was prompted by a letter to the New York Times published yesterday. Lt. Col. Bill Costello, the deputy director for public affairs at U.S. Southern Command in Miami, was responding to a Times editorial that criticized the military’s handling of the case. Col. Costello said in his letter that Capt. Yee was never charged with spying.
“This is plainly disingenuous,” Mr. Fidell said yesterday. The lawyer wrote that top military officers signed a confinement order that listed five “offenses charged.” They were: failure to obey a lawful order, mutiny and sedition, aiding the enemy, spying and espionage. The accusations resulted in a magistrate agreeing to jail Capt. Yee pending further investigation.
The Washington Times, which Sept. 20 first reported Capt. Yee’s arrest, cited the same document in its story that the chaplain had been arrested and was being held at a naval brig in South Carolina. Capt. Yee was the Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, attending to the religious needs of about 660 terror suspects from the war in Afghanistan.
After 76 days in confinement, the Army released the married Capt. Yee and filed charges of mishandling classified material, adultery and pornography. No espionage charges were filed.
Since then, U.S. Southern Command, which oversees the Guantanamo detention center, maintained it never accused Capt. Yee of spying.
Mr. Fidell asserted yesterday in his appeal that these statements are inaccurate.
He also said Col. Costello should not have written the letter to the New York Times at the very moment Capt. Yee was appealing his punishment. Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, who commanded the detention center, reprimanded the officer at a March 22 hearing.
Mr. Fidell’s appeal was filed Sunday with Gen. James T. Hill, who heads SouthCom.
His filing asks that Gen. Hill remove himself from the case since its spokesman has stated Capt. Yee’s guilt in the letter to the New York Times. He also asks that the punishment be set aside because it is “unjust and disproportionate,” and because the Army left no time to prepare a defense.
“The Army’s hope to avoid further bad press is entirely understandable, but it is not a valid basis for depriving a commissioned officer of the right to mount a defense,” Mr. Fidell said in his original appeal on Sunday. “This smacks of gamesmanship and bias.”
In his letter, Col. Costello suggested that Capt. Yee’s mishandling of classified material and his attempt to conceal belongings when his flight landed at the Naval Air Station in Jacksonville, Fla., was the basis for the arrest.
“This is totally revisionist history, as the confinement order … as well as the leak to The Washington Times amply demonstrate that far graver charges were the actual basis for the arrest and confinement,” Mr. Fidell wrote yesterday. “It is unheard of for persons suspected of merely violating the rules on transportation and storage of classified information to be placed in pretrial confinement, much less chained, blindfolded and held in solitary.”
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