Former army chaplain breaks silence over Guantanamo

[apothecary]

http://www.abc.net.au/correspondents/conte...05/s1493651.htm

HAMISH ROBERTSON: A former Muslim chaplain with the US army broke his silence last week, to speak about the allegations that he'd been a spy at the United States prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Captain James Yee was arrested in September 2003, and charged with treason. He was later shackled and blindfolded, spending 76 days in solitary confinement in a naval brig at Charleston, South Carolina.

The charges against him were eventually dropped, and he left the army with an honourable discharge. But Captain Yee's military career had been ruined and his family left with legal bills of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

James Yee has been speaking about his experiences to our North America Correspondent Jill Colgan.

JILL COLGAN: As the only Muslim chaplain at that time on the base, how did you see your role as an intermediary between the military and the detainees?

JAMES YEE: In many instances I was employed by my commander as, just as you said, an intermediary. There was a lot of tensions in the cell blocks between the guards and the prisoners, and I was often called upon to help relieve some of those tensions because I had a thorough understanding of the religious practices and the religious issues that was often the cause of much of the disturbances.

JILL COLGAN: Did you believe they were the worst of the worst?

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 were down there at the time when I was there, were in some way connected to September 11th or the tragedies of 9/11.

With that said, I think my assessment is very accurate because we've already seen over 200 have already been released, many of them back with their families and home, and there's continuing talks of hundreds of more that are ready to be released.

JILL COLGAN: When you look at the mental and physical wellbeing of the prisoners, what did you see?

JAMES YEE: There were a number of detainees who would not even speak, they had stopped speaking, and essentially had gone mute. Other detainees simply were despondent, did not react to other people.

One detainee I saw in Delta block was disturbed to the point that he became frustrated over the conditions that he was suffering through and he would bang his head repeatedly – he would bang his forehead repeatedly – against the steel mesh of the cage, bloodying up his forehead, and he needed medical attention.

There were at least two detainees when I was down there who had simply stopped eating completely. They had gotten to the point of despair where they refused to eat, they had no appetite and they had to be force-fed.

And they were force fed with a tube that gets forcibly inserted through the nose after being lubed with petroleum jelly. The prisoner is shackled to the hospital bed, both his arms, a guard comes and holds his forehead back and as the tube is inserted it's not a very comfortable experience for the prisoner, it's painful. And as I observed this tube going in the prisoner lets out a scream of pain.

JILL COLGAN: You say that you spoke to an Australian detainee David Hicks. What did he tell you?

JAMES YEE: I did speak with the prisoner David Hicks on a number of occasions. And at first he was in the general population with all the other prisoners.

And there were many times when he wanted to discuss specific things that were going on in his interrogation, but it was very hard to establish any type of privacy in that open cell block with guards who were always nearby and wanting to listen.

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 practising Muslim.

JILL COLGAN: How was his apparent state of mind and wellbeing?

JAMES YEE: I would think many detainees, they go through different cycles, and for sure there were cycles when David Hicks was suffering from some type of depression or despondence, of not knowing what was going to happen.

JILL COLGAN: Did he indicate any needs?

JAMES YEE: He did, he did at times indicate to me that he really wanted to talk through some of the things that were going on in the interrogations that were disturbing to him.

But again, there was really no opportunity for me to sit with him alone and prevented us from having an open discussion. There were always guards very close by, and the fact we both spoke English made it even more open to our conversations not being in any way confidential.

JILL COLGAN: Did you worry about his mental health at that point?

JAMES YEE: I had concerns about several detainees, because, as I mentioned, there were many who I had observed who had gone into behaviours which I thought weren't normal.

JILL COLGAN: Tell us what you were charged with and what the potential punishment you were facing?

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

In fact, the joint task force legal officer who came to prosecute against me threatened me with the death penalty, told clearly my attorneys, my military attorney at that time, that we had better have someone who was qualified to defend against a capital case.

This was very shocking and as I said, it was… I was, what was going thru my mind was, "What are these people doing?" It was a huge mistake, it was a gross miscarriage of justice and you know, I think that's one of the real issues about my experiences is that the military, the Government, made this enormous blunder.

JILL COLGAN: For the record, did you participate in any activity that could have been seen as either undermining US security or aiding and abetting 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: Why did it go so far, why didn't someone say stop, there's 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? And 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.