Criticism of the treatment of alleged terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba was one reason for the Senate action, and one man caught up in that controversy was former U.S. Army Captain James Yee. He was the Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo until he was accused of espionage, adultery, and other misconduct and held in solitary confinement for 76 days. Eventually all the charges were dropped, and his record was cleared. Yee has now told his story in a new book, FOR GOD AND COUNTRY. He talked with Deborah Potter.
JAMES YEE: This is the house I grew up in.
DEBORAH POTTER: The pictures in Yee's book, FOR GOD AND COUNTRY, tell the story of a typical American boy growing up in New Jersey. Brought up as a Lutheran, Jimmy Yee was a wrestler in high school and graduated from West Point. While serving in the army, he became a Muslim, left the service to study Islam, and returned in 2001 to become one of the military's first Muslim chaplains.Mr. YEE: Initially my impression of becoming a chaplain was that I would be focusing my work on improving conditions for Muslims in the military -- to see to it that the Muslims who are serving within the armed forces have the freedom to practice. And [these things] did become part of my job, but it was much more than that.
POTTER: Yee was assigned to the prison at Guantanamo, where detainees from the war on terror were interrogated. He provided religious support not only to fellow Muslims in the military but to the prisoners as well.Mr. YEE: My being a Muslim chaplain, [I] had much, much better insight into the concerns of the detainees, because I am a practicing Muslim myself. And I was better able to relay that to the command.
POTTER: But Yee says he soon felt uncomfortable at Camp Delta.
Mr. YEE: The anti-Muslim hostility down at Guantanamo was strong, not only towards the prisoners who were Muslim but also towards the military Muslims who were serving in Guantanamo. There were misunderstandings about Muslims socializing together. Why is that suspicious? A Muslim in Guantanamo who was staying late in order to do more work was seen as suspicious.POTTER: Yee says the military command at Guantanamo deliberately used Islam as a weapon against the prisoners.
Mr. YEE: I was targeted in large part because of my religion. Because my form of prayer, in which I bow prostrate to the ground, and reciting of the Qur'an in the Arabic language, was the same form of prayer as the prisoners in Guantanamo. That led many to believe that if these are alleged suspects, then I must be an alleged suspect.
Mr. YEE: You're testing me here. I have a copy of the Constitution. It's interesting. I read the very, very first line: "We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice. ..." I believe my story very much is a story of justice. And what I went through, the terrible ordeal that I suffered through was a gross miscarriage of justice.
Read more of Deborah Potter's 
