Matthew Mark Diaz is a former active-duty Lieutenant Commander (LCDR) and Judge Advocate General's Corps (JAGC) officer in the United States Navy. In mid-to-late 2004, Diaz served a six-month tour of duty in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba as deputy director of the detention center's legal office. Early in 2005 as LCDR Diaz was concluding his tour, he sent an anonymous greeting card to The Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York civil liberties and human rights group. The card contained the names of the detainees held at the
Guantanamo Bay detention camp
The Guantanamo Bay detention camp ( es, Centro de detención de la bahía de Guantánamo) is a United States military prison located within Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, also referred to as Guantánamo, GTMO, and Gitmo (), on the coast of Guant ...
. In July 2006, the United States government formally charged Diaz in a military court with five criminal counts related to the sending of these names, the most serious being that he intended to harm national security or advantage a foreign nation, a violation of the Espionage Act. In May 2007, he was convicted by a seven-member jury of military officers on 4 of 5 counts. He served a 6-month prison sentence and was dismissed from the military.
In April 2008, he was awarded the Ridenhour Prize for Truth Telling.
Diaz is currently employed with
The Bronx Defenders
The Bronx Defenders is a public defender office located in the South Bronx neighborhood of New York City. At the Bronx Defenders, criminal defense lawyers work together with civil lawyers, family defense lawyers, immigration lawyers, non-attorne ...
as an intake coordinator.
Family background
Diaz was born in 1965 in Gary, Indiana. He is one of six children. Diaz is a father to three children. His father is Robert Diaz, a California Registered Nurse convicted in 1984 for the murders of a dozen patients at two southern California hospitals. Robert Diaz's conviction was controversial, and he maintained his innocence until his death in 2010.
Matthew Diaz dropped out of high school to enlist in the U.S. Army at the age of 17. He obtained his GED and a bachelor's degree in Criminology during his nearly nine years of Army service. After obtaining his
Juris Doctor
The Juris Doctor (J.D. or JD), also known as Doctor of Jurisprudence (J.D., JD, D.Jur., or DJur), is a graduate-entry professional degree in law
and one of several Doctor of Law degrees. The J.D. is the standard degree obtained to practice law ...
degree at
Washburn University School of Law
The Washburn University School of Law is a public law school located on the main campus of Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas. Washburn Law was founded in 1903. The school is accredited by the American Bar Association and has been a member of ...
in 1994, Diaz was commissioned as a naval officer in the U.S. Navy's Judge Advocate General's Corps. He continues to play an active role in the life of his three children.
Diaz's father died of natural causes, while still in custody, in 2010.
Military career
Diaz spent approximately twenty years in military service.
Diaz dropped out of high school when he was 17 years old. Diaz served eight years as an enlisted man in the
United States Army
The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cla ...
, prior to being commissioned in the USN's
Judge Advocate General Corps
The Judge Advocate General's Corps, also known as JAG or JAG Corps, is the military justice branch or specialty of the United States Air Force, Army, Coast Guard, Marine Corps and Navy. Officers serving in the JAG Corps are typically called judg ...
, after earning a law degree. Matthew Diaz served his country as a deputy staff judge advocate at Guantánamo. Diaz received numerous awards throughout his career and received the highest praises of his superiors in annual fitness reports.
Charges
On July 28, 2006, Diaz was formally charged with improperly mailing suspected classified information about detainees in the
Guantanamo Bay detainment camp
The Guantanamo Bay detention camp ( es, Centro de detención de la bahía de Guantánamo) is a United States military prison located within Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, also referred to as Guantánamo, GTMO, and Gitmo (), on the coast of Guant ...
s to an individual unauthorized to receive it, in this case the
Virginia Pilot
''The Virginian-Pilot'' is the daily newspaper for Norfolk, Virginia. Commonly known as ''The Pilot'', it is Virginia's largest daily. It serves the five cities of South Hampton Roads as well as several smaller towns across southeast Virginia ...
'', August 29, 2006 Diaz was convicted and on May 18, 2007, he was sentenced to six months in prison and faced dismissal from the Navy.Scott Horton wrote:
The suspect document
Barbara Olshansky
Barbara Olshansky is an American human rights lawyer.
''The Case for Impeachment''
Olshansky is author with Dave Lindorff of ''The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office''.
Olshansky and Lindo ...
, of the
Center for Constitutional Rights
The Center for Constitutional RightsThe Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) is a Valentines Day
Valentine's Day, also called Saint Valentine's Day or the Feast of Saint Valentine, is celebrated annually on February 14. It originated as a Christian feast day honoring one or two early Christian martyrs named Saint Valentine and, thro ...
card.
While Olshansky had requested a list of all detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, the military had failed to provide one. The list provided by Diaz contained the names of 550 captives. The list had seven fields per entry.
The 558 names in the official list of captives whose enemy combatant status was confirmed by a
Combatant Status Review Tribunal
The Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRT) were a set of tribunals for confirming whether detainees held by the United States at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp had been correctly designated as "enemy combatants". The CSRTs were esta ...
had just three fields.
According to the background page to the charges against Diaz, the other six fields of the entries describing captives were:
The captives' names had not, at that time, been officially confirmed.
Olshansky did not know what to make of receiving the list in this manner, so she contacted Federal authorities.
Diaz was not directly involved in either the defense or prosecution of the ten detainees who faced charges before the
Guantanamo military commission
ThGuantanamo military commissionswere established by President George W. Bush – through a Military Order – on November 13, 2001, to try certain non-citizen terrorism suspects at the Guantanamo Bay prison. To date, there have been a total of e ...
s.
He served as a legal advisor to the JTF-GTMO, the command responsible for detention operations.
Profiled in ''The Guantanamo trap''
Diaz was one of the four individuals profiled in the award-winning documentary ''
The Guantanamo trap
''The Guantanamo Trap'' is a documentary film about four individuals whose lives were changed by their association with the Guantanamo Bay detention camps.
The film was directed by Thomas Wallner and won the special jury prize at the 2011 ...
''.
The other three individuals were
Murat Kurnaz
Murat Kurnaz (born 19 March 1982) is a Turkish citizen and legal resident of Germany who was held in extrajudicial detention by the United States at its military base in Kandahar, Afghanistan and in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp at Guantana ...
, a former Guantanamo captive; Diane Beaver, another military lawyer, best known for drafting a memo later called ''"the torture memo"''; and
Gonzalo Boye
Gonzalo Boye Tuset (born 1965) is a lawyer based in Spain, known for being convicted in connection with a kidnapping by Basque separatist group ETA (separatist group), ETA in 1996, and for attempting to charge members of the Presidency of George W ...
a Spanish lawyer who tried to lay charges, in Spain, against individuals he saw as responsible for war crimes committed in Guantanamo.
Disbarment and Reinstatement
Diaz was disbarred in Kansas after his release, but is a current member of the New York State Bar.
In 2008, Diaz's license to practice law had been suspended.
In 2011, Diaz appeared before a 3-member disciplinary panel. After a day-long hearing, the panel recommended a 3-year suspension, retroactive to 2008 and that Diaz should be immediately reinstated to the Kansas Bar. The
Kansas Supreme Court
The Kansas Supreme Court is the highest judicial authority in the state of Kansas. Composed of seven justices, led by Chief Justice Marla Luckert, the court supervises the legal profession, administers the judicial branch, and serves as the sta ...
rejected the panel's recommendation and instead took the harsher measure of disbarment, claiming he revealed information that could have allowed terrorists to identify Guantanamo staff, and claiming Diaz thus opened Guantanamo staff to a fear of retaliation. Diaz's lawyer, Jack Focht, issued a statement that stated the Kansas Supreme Court, "has a different view of the lawyer's duty to see that the client, even though the client is the United States government, does have a duty to obey the dictates of the United States Supreme Court."
Diaz was disbarred on November 21, 2012, and will have to wait seven years before he can request re-instatement in Kansas. However, he was admitted to the New York State Bar on May 2, 2018.