Captain James Yee is asking the Pentagon to apologize for treating him so badly. And maybe they should. After all, I noted in December 2003 that the prosecution in his case was asking for more time to determine whether or not the documents he was carrying out of Guantanamo were really classified at all — after he had been arrested for carrying classified documents. If this was just bungling, the Pentagon should indeed own up to it; they’ve shown every readiness to acknowledge other missteps.
But when the charges against Yee were dismissed, as noted here in March 2004, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, commander of Joint Task Force Guantanamo, said that the government was dropping the charges because there were “national security concerns that would arise from the release of the evidence.” Hardly a ringing exoneration of Yee.
I realize that those same national security concerns may prevent any disclosure of any more information about Yee, but here again, as with the case of Tariq Ramadan, the government’s silence about why it has acted the way it has only gives a propaganda opportunity to those who oppose resistance to the global jihad in a larger sense.
From IslamOnline, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:
WASHINGTON, October 13, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Captain James Yee is asking the Pentagon to apologize for putting him through what he called a “gross miscarriage of justice”, after he was accused of spying and was thrown in solitary confinement for 76 days, only to be cleared of all charges.
Yee, 37, who was sent to Guantanamo on November 5, 2002 to serve as chaplain to Muslim detainees and soldiers, left handcuffed in September 2003, only ten months after arriving, and was held in maximum security until October 24, where he wore hand and leg irons when he left his cell.
“My experience had taught me how little cultural understanding of Islam most military leaders had,” Yee, who changed his name to Youssef after reverting to Islam in 1990, wrote in a recently released 240-page book, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
“I am a soldier, a citizen, and a patriot. But in the eyes of a suspicious, misguided minority who have lost touch with America’s national inclusiveness, above all else I am a Muslim.
“There are times when I fear that my ordeal simply stemmed from the fact that I am one of ‘them’ – a Muslim,” he wrote.
His knowledge of Arabic, his praying and his denunciation of mistreatment of the Noble Qur’an by some soldiers fed the suspicions against him and other Muslim soldiers, according to AFP.