User:George Swan/Sandbox/Matthew Diaz

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Matthew Diaz is a lawyer and an officer in the United States Navy.[1][2]

Military career

Diaz is reported to be approximately 40 years old, and to have spent most of his adult life in military service.[3][4][5] The Virginia Pilot reports that Diaz served eight years as an enlisted man in the United States Army, prior to being commissioned in the United States Navy's Judge Advocate General Corps.

Charges

Diaz faces eight charges. The charges include[5]:

  • failing to obey a lawful general regulation;
  • engaging in conduct unbecoming an officer by wrongfully transmitting classified documents to an unauthorized person; and *removing, printing and communicating to an unauthorized person classified secret information related to national defense.

In August of 2006. Duaz was formally charged with spying, for the unauthorized distribution of classified information about detainees in the Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba.[1][3] Diaz was not directly involved in either the defense or prosecution of the ten detainees who faced charges before the Guantanamo military commissions. He served as a legal advisor to the Office for the Administrative Review of Detained Enemy Combatants, the body authorized to conduct Combatant Status Review Tribunals and Administrative Review Board hearings.

Initially the identity of the organization Diaz passed the document to was kept from the public, as was the contents of the classified document.[6][7] The organization was the Center for Constitutional Rights. The document was a list of the names of the Guantanamo captives. The center played a leading role in the efforts to provide the captives held in the Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba, with legal assistance in submitting writs of habeas corpus. At the time Diaz sent the document to the Center the Department of Defense had not yet released the captives' identities. Two official lists of their identities were released on April 20 2006 and May 15 2006.[8][9]

References