Chaplain Detained Over Documents

September 26, 2003

For nearly a year, Army Chaplain Capt. Yousef Yee peered through the steel mesh cells at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Station, dispensing religious guidance to suspected terrorists.Now, the West Point graduate, who converted to Islam and studied Arabic in Syria, is being questioned at a military brig in South Carolina.

Authorities detained Yee in Jacksonville, Fla. , on Sept. 10 after returning from Guantanamo. Although he has not been charged with any crime, Yee was allegedly carrying classified documents containing cell diagrams and other material involving the detainees.

The 35-year-old son of Chinese immigrants, Yee was raised a Lutheran in suburban Springfield, N.J. On Sunday, police shooed reporters away from his parents’ tan, split-level home. Several homes in the neighborhood displayed American flags from their porches.

A handwritten note taped on the family’s front door on Sunday read, “No reporters or media please.”

Yee abandoned the middle-class neighborhood to enroll at West Point Academy, where he graduated in 1990.

Soon after his graduation, Yee left the military to undergo Arabic and religious training in Syria, where he spent four years, according to the Department of Defense. During that time, he converted to Islam, changed his name from James to Yousef and reportedly met his Syrian wife.

The Army welcomed him back after his travels, and soon he became a chaplain with the 29th Signal Battalion at Fort Lewis, Wash. He was there during the Sept. 11 attacks.

“An act of terrorism, the taking of innocent civilian lives, is prohibited by Islam, and whoever has done this needs to be brought to justice, whether he is Muslim or not,” Yee said after the attacks.

After he arrived at Guantanamo in November 2002, the stocky chaplain with a thinning buzzcut said one of his goals was to clear up misunderstandings about his adopted religion.

“A lot of people don’t know Jesus is part of Islam but Muslims believe he was a prophet,” Yee told The Associated Press in January. “Surely people can be more open-minded.”

But Yee, who was normally reticent in interviews with the media, was also concerned about the detainees’ spiritual needs.

Working hard to assess their needs, Yee would make sure the men had Qurans in their cells and that the crackly recorded prayer calls were being broadcast five times a day.

His main job, however, was providing counseling and comfort to the prisoners at Camp Delta, the high-security prison where some 660 detainees from 42 countries are being held for suspectedOlinks to Afghanistan’s ousted Taliban regime or the al Qaeda terror network.

Although he was seldom out of earshot from guards or interpreters helping with interrogations, Yee was sometimes left alone with the men.

ûis arrival came as U.S. officials struggled to stem a wave of suicide attempts among the detainees and cope with steady criticism over the decision to classify the detainees as Òenemy combatants” rather than prisoners of war, which would have allotted the men with more legal protections under the Geneva Conventions.

Many of the detainees have been held in Guantanamo for nearly two years and none have been charged or given access to lawyers.

“He had daily access to the detainees,” said Capt. Tom Crosson, U.S. Southern Command spokesman. “He is the first U.S. soldier that I know of to be detained and held since the war on terror began.”

Pointing to the need for Muslims in the U.S. military, officials had touted Yee as a teacher and an example of how the United States was trying to improve conditions for troops and detainees alike at the bleak outpost in eastern Cuba.

“The information he provided has led to many improvements for the Muslim troops of the Joint Task Force in Guantanamo as well as an increased awareness of detainees’ religious needs,” Guantanamo Chaplain Herbert Heavner told The Wire, Guantanamo’s military newspaper, in March.

Yee is being held at a military brig in Charleston, S.C. — the same place where officials are holding Yaser Esam Hamdi, an American-born Saudi who allegedly fought with the Taliban, and Jose Padilla, a former Chicago gang member charged with plotting to detonate a bomb.

Chaplain Detained Over Documents

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