Army chaplain charged in Guantanamo case

? A Muslim U.S. Army chaplain arrested a month ago on suspicion of spying at the prison camp for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was charged Friday with two counts of disobeying orders by mishandling secret documents, the U.S. Southern Command announced Friday.

The relatively minor charges against Capt. James “Youseff” Yee, 35, suggest that military investigators did not find he was part of a larger conspiracy to pass secrets gleaned from prisoners to other governments or people.

But a Southcom spokesman said it was still too early to know whether other charges might be lodged against Yee or what had been turned up by a security review of the island camp after the recent detentions of Yee and two Guantanamo translators.

“The investigation continues. To say there is a spy ring or there isn’t a spy ring, it’s premature to conclude either way,” said Raul Duany, the spokesman. “It’s not black and white yet. It’s still a process.”

Yee was arrested Sept. 10 by FBI agents and U.S. military investigators at the Jacksonville Naval Air Station. He was returning to the United States from Guantanamo, where he had been a spiritual adviser to the 660 prisoners from 43 nations being held there as suspected terrorists. Reports at the time said he was carrying either diagrams of the prison camp or lists of prisoners’ names.

But there was no mention of those documents in the Southcom announcement Friday.

“Specifically, Yee is charged with taking classified material to his home and wrongfully transporting classified material without the proper security containers or covers,” the announcement said.

Each charge carries a potential penalty of two years in prison, a dishonorable discharge and loss of pay, said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Chris Loundermon, a Southcom spokesman.

After Yee’s arrest, the detentions of two other people who had worked at Guantanamo heightened concerns about security at the base.

Senior Airman Ahmad al Halabi, who had worked as an Arabic translator there and had been detained since July, was charged with espionage for allegedly gathering classified information and messages from prisoners with plans to send that information to Syria. The charges could carry the death penalty.

Another Guantanamo translator, former Army Pvt. Ahmed Mehalba, was charged Sept. 30 with lying to a federal officer after customs officers at Boston’s Logan International Airport found a computer disc with classified information in his luggage when he returned from a trip to visit family in Cairo, Egypt.