Alleging Detainees Abused, Ex-Guantanamo Bay Chaplain Releases Detailed Book

c. 2005 Religion News Service (UNDATED) For James Yee, it has been a long silence. Arrested on suspicion of espionage in September 2003 and later exonerated, the former Muslim chaplain at the Guantanamo Bay prison remained under a military gag order until his honorable discharge earlier this year. Now Yee has written “For God and […]

c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) For James Yee, it has been a long silence. Arrested on suspicion of espionage in September 2003 and later exonerated, the former Muslim chaplain at the Guantanamo Bay prison remained under a military gag order until his honorable discharge earlier this year.

Now Yee has written “For God and Country,” an insider’s account of the controversies surrounding the treatment of prisoners captured by the United States in the war on terror.


The charges against him, he said in an interview, were the price he paid for blowing the whistle on detainee treatment.

Q: You are one of only a few people who have had such close personal contact with the detainees at Guantanamo. Can you tell us more about who these guys are?

A: There were a number of reports of the selling of people in Afghanistan because people were offered $5,000 for handing over someone from al-Qaida. And you know, Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world. If you see an Arab guy in the street, you do what you can to capture that guy and grab five grand from our government. I heard a lot of that down there.

I stayed away from things that related to guilt or innocence. In general, a prisoner has privileged communication with a chaplain. But these guys are alleged terrorists, and the U.S. administration’s position is that they don’t have rights.

I was concerned. Is there privileged communication between me and those prisoners or not? U.S. Southern Command gave me a legal ruling and said “no.” I operated on that basis; that meant I needed to stay away from things of guilt or innocence.

Q: But did you develop an opinion about whether these guys are terrorists?

A: In terms of hardened terrorists or terrorists behind Sept. 11, as we’re led to believe these guys are, the reality is these guys probably know as much about Osama bin Laden and Sept. 11 as Private Joe Snuffy _ that’s an expression meaning any private in the military _ knows about what’s going on in the Pentagon with Donald Rumsfeld and his planning.

You’re made to believe that even these 12- to 14-year-olds held down there are hardened terrorists. But in my interaction with them on a weekly basis, these guys were adolescent teens who made fun of each other like any kids do. And the guards disciplined them with time-outs like I would do to my 5-year-old daughter. These are normal kids.


Q: You write in the book about two kinds of abuse _ physical mistreatment of the prisoners and mistreatment of the Quran: officers ripping it, kicking it, etc. Which had a greater impact on the prisoners?

A: When I was there, the abuses of the Quran and the abuses of religious aspects of Islam were a much bigger problem.

The Quran abuse was a huge problem because it was hard to solve. When the Newsweek article (describing guards flushing a Quran down the toilet) came out, which caused huge outrage in the Muslim world, the Pentagon’s response was “we had a standard operating procedure in place that gave guidance to soldiers on how to properly handle the Quran.”

Who do you think wrote that standard operating procedure? I did. A couple of weeks later an incident would happen in the interrogation room with the Quran being kicked on the floor, or another Quran would be accidentally dropped on the ground, or they started playing with the Quran holders (surgical masks used to hang the book in the cells). You know, playing with the rules.

Also, when you look at the SOP, it said that every cell would have a Quran _ and the Quran couldn’t be removed, except by the authorization of the commander. I didn’t write that in. They implemented that. So what does that do? That forces a Quran into the cell.

What reason would you have to force a detainee to have a Quran in his cell other than to ensure that he witnesses the abuse, knowing that it’s going to rile him up. To me, that was a clear indication that the abuse going on was systematic.


Q: Newsweek had to recant its account about the Quran being dropped in a toilet. You mention that the same story had been relayed to you at Guantanamo. Do you believe it had been thrown in the toilet?

A: The Newsweek report is that an interrogator flushed the Quran down the toilet. That riled everyone up in the whole Muslim world. They had to backtrack on the report because they said the source changed his mind or was unclear.

The issue was Quran abuse. That was the issue. But the Pentagon was able to change it into a story about improper reporting. In speaking to the detainees, I know first-hand from the detainees that, for sure, when they were in (the previous camp) Camp X-Ray the Qurans were thrown in the toilet buckets.

Q: You have written that the treatment of the detainees hurt the mission at Guantanamo. Can you explain that?

A: The big picture is, when you have abuses and mistreatment, we’re undermining our own national values of humane treatment, of ethical and moral conduct and standards. When you violate rules and regulations, that’s a violation of law. We’re a nation that upholds the rule of law.

In terms of the smaller picture, the mission of the operation, our priority was to gather information. But from my interaction with prisoners and their conversations with me, they would express to me that they were less likely to speak with interrogators when they are abused by other soldiers or the interrogators themselves.


MO/JL END DONOHUE

(Brian Donohue covers immigration issues for The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J.)

Editors: To obtain a photo of the book cover, “For God and Country,” to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug. If searching by subject, designate “exact phrase” for best results.

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