WASHINGTON — A Muslim chaplain who ministered to detainees at the U.S. Navy’s base at Guantanamo Bay was charged Friday with disobeying orders by taking classified material home, becoming the third staff member to face criminal charges in a widening investigation into security breaches at the Cuban prison.
Army Capt. James Joseph Yee, who previously had been based at Fort Lewis, also faces a second charge of "wrongfully transporting classified material without the proper security containers or covers."
Military officials at the Pentagon and the Southern Command headquarters in Miami, which oversees the Guantanamo Bay detention center, said more criminal charges might be filed as the probe continues.
Yee was arrested Sept. 10 at the naval air station in Jacksonville, Fla., after arriving on a flight from Guantanamo Bay, where he was the lead Muslim chaplain for about 660 al-Qaida and Taliban detainees.
Master Sgt. Jose Ruiz said Yee was charged with two counts of violating Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice by "failing to obey a lawful general order" when he allegedly took home secret material from Camp Delta.
"These are the guidelines that safeguard our nation’s security," Ruiz said. "There was sufficient evidence to charge him with that."
Yee is being held at the Navy brig in Charleston, S.C., and officials said he has maintained his innocence.
At Guantanamo Bay, he was for 10 months the only chaplain ministering to the Muslim detainees, and other chaplains said he had ready access to the detainees because of their shared faith and his ability to speak Arabic. He earlier had spent four years studying in Syria.
According to the official charge sheets, Yee converted the material for his personal use between Nov. 30 and Sept. 9. The criminal specifications state that he was "wrongfully taking classified material to a housing unit" and that he was "wrongfully transporting classified information without the proper locking containers or covers."
A 35-year-old West Point graduate, Yee was questioned for several hours after his arrest, especially about why he had diagrams of Camp Delta and other documents in his possession.
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