Guantanamo Bay_Abuse of
Human Rights And
Justice by
James Yee in
Peace Conference 2007 Mumbai.
James Yee
From
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
James J. Yee.
James J. Yee (
Chinese: 余百康 or 余优素福, also known by the
Arabic name Yusuf Yee) (born c.
1968) is an
American former
United States Army chaplain with the rank of captain
. He is best known for being subject to an intense investigation by the
United States, but all charges were later dropped.
Yee, a
Chinese American, was born in
New Jersey and raised in
Springfield Township,[1] where he attended
Jonathan Dayton High School.[2] Yee graduated from
West Point in
1990. Shortly afterward, he converted from
Lutheran Christianity[3] to
Islam in
1991, undergoing religious training in
Syria and meeting his wife Huda, a
Palestinian, with whom he now has one child.[4]
Guantanamo[edit]
In his appointed role as chaplain, Yee ministered to Muslim detainees held at
Guantánamo Bay detention camp and received commendation from his superiors for his work.[5] When returning from duty at the
Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, he was arrested on
September 10, 2003, in
Jacksonville, Florida, when a
U.S. Customs agent found a list of
Guantanamo detainees and interrogators among his belongings.[6] He was charged with five offenses: sedition, aiding the enemy, spying, espionage, and failure to obey a general order. These charges were later reduced to mishandling classified information in addition to some minor charges.[6] He was then transferred to a
United States Navy brig in
Charleston, South Carolina.
The government did not name the country or entity for whom it suspected Yee was spying.
All court-martial charges against Yee were dropped on
March 19, 2004, with
Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller "citing national security concerns that would arise from the release of the evidence,"[7] and he was released to resume his duties. Yee was then accused of adultery and storing pornography on a government computer; and non-judicial punishment under
Article 15,
UCMJ was imposed. His appeal to
General James T. Hill,
Commander,
United States Southern Command, was granted in
April 2004. He left the
US military with an honorable discharge in January, but he is still seeking an apology.
Yee was a sometime supervisor of a former
US Air Force Airman, who was subsequently court-martialed for his misconduct, but charges were dropped against him.
After Guantanamo[edit]
In
October 2005 Yee published his book,
For God and Country:
Faith and
Patriotism Under Fire.[8][9] In it, Yee described an escalating series of problems, including the role he says was played by
Adolph McQueen, then the commander of the
Joint Detention Group.[10] Yee wrote that he was kept in solitary confinement for seventy-six days, and that he was forced to undergo sensory deprivation. He also wrote that General Geoffrey Miller routinely incited the guards to hate the detainees. He alleges being told of mistreatment of prisoners.[11] Yee argues that most of the detainees had little or no intelligence value about
Osama bin Laden or al-Qaida's inner circle:
The people down in Guántanamo probably know as much about Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida as any private in the military would know what's going on inside the
Pentagon.
In July
2006, Yee was stopped at the border while returning from a trip to
Vancouver, British Columbia, to see
Cirque du Soleil. It was Yee's first trip outside the
U.S. since he was discharged from the army. He was detained at the border for 75 minutes. Yee commented, "
Perhaps this is an indication I'm still of interest to the federal government."[12]
On
October 19, 2007,
Syrian television broadcast its interview with Yee, in
Arabic, where he discussed
Koran desecration on the part of the
U.S. military.[13]
In
December 2007, Yee made a statement on
Australian Guantanamo Bay inmate
David Hicks, who he regularly counselled while working at Guantanamo Bay. He said that he did not feel
Hicks was a threat to
Australia, and that "Any
American soldier who has been through basic training has had 50 times more training than this guy."[14]
Yee was a delegate to the
2008 Democratic National Convention from the 9th
Congressional District of the state of
Washington, pledged to support
Barack Obama, and actually cast a nominating ballot.[15]
Yee has spoken about what he witnessed at the
U.S. Naval Base in
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to audiences around the world.
- published: 23 Mar 2014
- views: 1705