Saturday, October 29, 2005

Former chaplain paints grim picture of Guantanamo Bay

KERRY O'BRIEN: Now to a first-hand and rather grim picture of life behind bars for the terrorism suspects [scapegoats and patsies to bolster support for the illegal and degrading resource wars in the Middle East] at the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay. It's an account from an officer who served there, a former Army Muslim chaplain, Captain James Yee, one of the few people to have regular contact with Australian detainee David Hicks.

In an extraordinary chain of events, Captain Yee himself was charged with spying at Guantanamo and sat in a naval brig, facing the prospect of the death penalty. All the more extraordinary because Captain Yee was later cleared and given an honourable discharge from the Army. Washington correspondent Jill Colgan has this exclusive interview.

JILL COLGAN: Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The maximum security prison where more than 500 prisoners sit awaiting trial. The soldiers assigned here come and go, but for one army captain, this assignment cost him his career, and nearly his life.

JAMES YEE, FORMER US ARMY CHAPLAIN: What was going through my mind is what are - what are these people doing? It was a huge mistake, it was a gross miscarriage of justice.

JILL COLGAN: The US military wants Americans to trust its decisions at Guantanamo, but the case of Chaplain Yee shows the military can and does get it wrong. Chaplain James Yee began his assignment in Guantanamo Bay in November 2002.

JAMES YEE: Not only did I advise the command on any issues regarding religion and how it affected the operation. But I also was inside the cell blocks daily, interacting personally on a personal level with the prisoners.

JILL COLGAN: A third generation American of Chinese descent, James Yee had graduated from the prestigious West Point military academy. His father and two brothers also served in the US military. After converting to Islam, he wanted to combine his military and religious roles as a Muslim chaplain. We met him five months into his tour of duty, put up by the army as an example to the media of its adherence to religious rights for the Muslim prisoners.

How do you reconcile yourself as chaplain with knowing that the detainees here haven't been charged with anything and have not been convicted of anything, but are here in ongoing detention?

JAMES YEE: OK, in terms of reconcile, I don't really have anything to reconcile with, but ...

JILL COLGAN: But it turned out that issue was at the heart of an internal struggle the chaplain was then facing.

JAMES YEE: It wasn't my job to determine guilt or innocence. But I was able to interact with them on a personal level. And as a result, it was very hard for me to find that all 660 of those prisoners who are down there at the time when I was there were in some way connected to September 11.

JILL COLGAN: The Muslim captain found himself increasingly torn between his military duties and his defence of the prisoners' religious rights.

JAMES YEE: What I saw down there is this became a systematic way to abuse the detainees.

JILL COLGAN: He claims one form of abuse involved initial response force teams in riot gear, RIFs, to forcibly extract prisoners for even minor infractions.

JAMES YEE: Some detainees had the privilege of having a styrofoam cup. Sometimes they ended up with two, one for drinking, one for hygiene purposes. The second styrofoam cup was unauthorised by the regulations and therefore technically could be called illegal contraband. Now, illegal contraband meant that you had to spend some time in solitary confinement, the guards would call an (inaudible word) team and the guards would come one after the another, line up in one in front of the prisoner's cell. After the prisoner is doused with pepper spray, the door is quickly unlocked and the these six to eight men rushed into the prisoner's cell, man-handled the prisoner down to the ground as forcibly as possible.

JILL COLGAN: He says mass suicide attempts were organised to protest against guards abusing the Koran.

JAMES YEE: It caused chaos in the blocks, and then again, just as you thought it would be calm, another detainee would try and carry out a suicide.

JILL COLGAN: He spoke often with Australian prisoner David Hicks.

JAMES YEE: But on occasion he would talk about, for example, in his interrogations, that he was offered a prostitute in exchange for giving some type of information, but he felt that that was just an insult to him, it was an insult to him being a Muslim, a practicing Muslim.

JILL COLGAN: James Yee says he was one of the few who saw David Hicks after he was charged and moved into isolation. Hicks, he says, passed his time studying Islamic law.

JAMES YEE: He was just really asking that I request to make more visits to him, because I was really essentially the only one he had contact with, the command only allowed me to go once a week, and in those conditions, it wasn't - they weren't open cells, they were completely closed. He had no access to sunlight.

MAN 1: You need to take a break, too, 'cause you work hard, and I appreciate all the work you do, but ...

JILL COLGAN: But despite feedback praising his work, Chaplain Yee's defence of the prisoners brought him and his Muslim co-workers under scrutiny. When he left Guantanamo to visit his family, he was arrested at a Florida airporhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gift and spent 76 harrowing days in a navy brig in south
Carolina.

JAMES YEE: I was accused of spying, espionage, aiding the enemy and mutiny and sedition, all of these being capital crimes that carried a death penalty.

JILL COLGAN: James Yee's case never got to trial. In an autobiography about his experiences, he explains how the spying charges against him dropped away. But not before his career was ruined and his family ran up hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal bills. For the record, did you undertake any activity that would've undermined US security or aided and abetted any of the detainees?

JAMES YEE: Everything I did was fully within my role as the Muslim chaplain in Guantanamo. I followed to a T the standard operating procedures, the unescorted access that I had to the prisoners was authorised. My conversations with the prisoners was known by all of my supervisors.

JILL COLGAN: Instead of espionage, the Army pursued Captain Yee on charges of adultery and accessing pornography on the Internet. But even these were expunged from his record when he was honourably discharged from the Army. The Pentagon has refused to comment on the allegations in his book.

Why didn't someone say "Stop, there has been a terrible mistake", when it was clear the charges against you were falling away?

JAMES YEE: This is a great question, why did it go so far? I can only speculate, but I think the important point is it did go that far and someone needs to take responsibility for allowing it to go that far.

KERRY O'BRIEN: Jill Colgan with that report.

By Jill Colgan posted 29 October 05

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