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Accused Muslim chaplain could face only minor charges

http://www.jewishworldreview.com | (KRT) Army investigators are leaning toward filing slap-on-the-wrist charges against a Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo Bay who was investigated for espionage, a military source told the Daily News on Wednesday.

The "handful" of minor charges against Capt. Yousef Yee could be leveled by next week and are not expected to include the more serious allegations of spying, sedition or aiding the enemy, according to the source familiar with the probe.

"It's very weak," the military source said, saying the charges are likely to be related to dereliction of duty and disobeying a general order. "It's nothing compared to espionage or anything like that."

Yee, 35, who was raised in Springfield, N.J., and graduated from West Point, was caught up in a growing spy scandal at the ultrahigh-security Camp Delta, where about 660 al-Qaida and Taliban suspects are being held.

The chaplain was collared by suspicious Customs Service inspectors at the Jacksonville, Fla., Naval Air Station on Sept. 10. Diagrams of cells and names of detainees and their interrogators were allegedly found in Yee's luggage, law enforcement sources said.

Officials at the Army's Southern Command, which oversees the Yee probe led by counterintelligence agents, declined to comment Wednesday.

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Military investigators initially suspected that Yee may have acted somehow out of sympathy for the plight of detainees who have been confined in Cuba for almost two years without charges.

Yee's arrest came six weeks after the arrest of Senior Airman Ahmad al-Halabi, an Arabic translator at Gitmo. Al-Halabi was charged with 30 counts of spying for Syria and Qatar, and his case touched off a broad espionage investigation at Camp Delta.

Other Guantanamo translators and staff are under scrutiny, including a Navy cook questioned by investigators last week and released, Pentagon officials said. Also last week, a second translator, Ahmed Mehalba, was arrested in Boston after customs agents allegedly found a secret document on a computer disk in his luggage.

Several military sources said that although many questions remain in the larger espionage investigation, there is no indication a spy ring operated inside the camp.

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