A Guantánamo JAG bonded with an Indian-American civil rights lawyer who won a landmark Supreme Court case for detainee rights. A few months later, Matt Díaz, who found jailing people indefinitely without trial to be deeply immoral, mailed Gitanjali Gutiérrez’ organization the names of everyone held at the base. But the civil rights org was ordered to turn the list over to the government, and Díaz was convicted of insubordination, says the NYT:

… Gitanjali Gutierrez, a young lawyer for two British detainees… cut a swath at Guantánamo, but not in a way that endeared her to most of the government lawyers… “pushy and deeply suspicious”… “difficult to please and very stubborn…” But Diaz liked her. He found her smart, and he was impressed by her commitment to her work. At least a couple of the other lawyers who saw them together at Guantánamo got the impression that Diaz had something of a crush on Gutierrez…

… he asked her to keep him in mind if her clients were ever charged in the tribunals and she needed a uniformed lawyer to help in the defense. A month later, he e-mailed her to wish her a happy 34th birthday… She sounded a little surprised to hear from him but wrote back that she was returning to Guantánamo soon and would bring him a new book about the Abu Ghraib scandal, Chain of Command…

… he slipped the stack of paper inside a Valentine’s Day card he had bought at the base exchange. It was an odd touch. The card showed a cartoon puppy with long ears and bubble eyes and the greeting, “Hope Valentine’s Day is just your style.” Diaz would later say that he chose it because it was big enough to hold the list. He also hoped the lipstick-red envelope might pass unscrutinized through the Guantánamo post office.

… the red envelope reached the New York offices of the Center for Constitutional Rights… Diaz had addressed the card to Barbara Olshansky… she had written to the Pentagon… asking for the names of the detainees… [she] was instructed to turn the material over to the Justice Department… a federal agent in a black overcoat… went to retrieve the card and its contents…

This past May, Matthew Diaz became the only United States serviceman to be convicted and imprisoned for an act of insubordination directed at the Bush administration’s detention policies. [Link]

Whistleblower and Constitutional hero Díaz did not get a medal. Instead, he served six months in a military brig. The U.S. government lost in court and was eventually forced to release detainees’ names on its own. Díaz maintains he did the right thing.

“My oath as a commissioned officer is to the Constitution of the United States. I’m not a criminal.” [Link]

More on Gita Gutiérrez:

Gita was a member of the original legal team for Rasul v. Bush, the landmark Guantánamo case in the United States Supreme Court. She was the first civilian attorney to visit a client at Guantánamo… She graduated magna cum laude from Cornell Law School. Following graduation, she clerked for the Honorable Guido Calabresi, United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit and taught International Human Rights Law and Terrorism at Cornell Law School. Gita is Indian-American and grew up in Kentucky. [Link]

At 1:35, she talks about how her client was tortured in the Black Hole of Cuba:

Gutiérrez tells Ted Koppel that Guantánamo makes her ashamed:

The most difficult thing for me to defend internationally has been to simply pick people up and put them in prison without following any of our existing laws.

She won Rasul v. Bush, which affirmed that Guantánamo is under U.S. courts’ jurisdiction:

Rasul v. Bush… is a landmark United States Supreme Court decision establishing that the U.S. court system has the authority to decide whether foreign nationals (non-U.S. citizens) held in Guantanamo Bay were rightfully imprisoned… Court found that the degree of control exercised by the United States over the Guantanamo Bay base was sufficient to trigger the application of habeas corpus rights. Stevens, using a list of precedents stretching back to mid-17th Century English Common Law cases, found that the right to habeas corpus can be exercised in “all … dominions under the sovereign’s control.” Because the United States exercised “complete jurisdiction and control” over the base, the fact that ultimate sovereignty remained with Cuba was irrelevant.

Further, Stevens wrote that the right to habeas corpus is not dependent on citizenship status. The detainees were therefore free to bring suit challenging their detention as unconstitutional… The claimant whose name the case bears, Shafiq Rasul, was released before the decision was handed down. [Link]

Díaz is not the only Constitution defender out there:

One of the best-known Guantánamo rebels is another Navy lieutenant commander, Charles Swift. He was assigned to represent Salim Hamdan, who admitted working as Osama bin Laden’s driver while in Afghanistan but denied fighting or being an al-Qaeda member. Cmdr. Swift alleged that prosecutors told him he couldn’t get access to his client unless he agreed in advance to negotiate a guilty plea for him. Cmdr. Swift refused and sued the government, resulting in the landmark 2006 U.S. Supreme Court decision that threw out the Guantánamo military tribunal system. “The environment at Guantánamo is poisonous…” [Link]

Then there’s Michael Mori:

Maj. Michael Mori… sharply criticizing the Bush administration’s policy toward the detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, calling the military tribunals before which some will be tried ”kangaroo courts.”… ”What I’m saying about the system isn’t leftist,” he said one recent morning here, speaking of the tribunals. ”It offends my understanding of what justice is that’s been ingrained in me by the Marine Corps and by my legal training.” [Link]

Smuggling secrets in a Valentine to defend American freedom: this would make a fabulous thriller. Hollywood, are you listening?