Prosecutor: A valentine held names of detainees

A Navy lawyer sent a human rights lawyer a Valentine’s Day card with Guantanamo Bay detainees’ names and intelligence about them tucked inside, prosecutors said Monday.

Lt. Cmdr. Matthew M. Diaz’s actions endangered the lives of the detainees and American troops on the front line in the war on terrorism, prosecutor Lt. James Hoffman said during opening statements in Diaz’s court-martial at Norfolk Naval Station.

Diaz is charged with failing to obey a lawful general regulation, engaging in conduct unbecoming an officer by wrongfully transmitting classified documents to an unauthorized person, and turning over to an unauthorized person secret information related to national defense.

Diaz was near the end of a six-month stint at the U.S. military base in Cuba when he went to his office Jan. 2, 2005, logged in to a classified military network, and accessed an online detainee database, Hoffman said. Diaz printed the names and nationalities of 550 detainees, the interrogators assigned to them and “intelligence sources and methods,” Hoffman said.

Diaz then “cut that document into 39 sheets so that the nation’s secrets fit inside this card,” Hoffman said as he held up to the jury a copy of the card, with a big heart and a Chihuahua on the front. He said Diaz mailed the card in an unmarked envelope on Jan. 15, 2005, his last day of duty at the base.

Diaz, 41, of Topeka, Kan., was a staff judge advocate at Guantanamo Bay, where he provided counsel to the military command in charge of the detention center.