An American In Chains

[NATO AIR]

what REALLY happened with chaplain yee? I don't think anyone, definitely not the US gov't or Mr. Yee himself, have provided the true answer.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-1817081,00.html
................... continued from a longer excerpt at the above link

Many months later I learnt the facts from court documents.

People initially became suspicious of me because of the presentation that I gave during the newcomers’ briefing. Stories quietly began to circulate about me and my fellow Muslim personnel. We were too sympathetic to the plight of the detainees and too critical of how the MPs treated the prisoners. We prayed together on Friday afternoons. Orlich even noted that Ahmad was seen to be “shadow boxing” as he left the chapel.
“I found that to be odd,” Orlich told a military investigator.

The accusations were retold and exaggerated in back yards and on the beaches during the hot Cuban evenings, fuelled by boredom and discount vodka. Some troopers adopted names for us: “the
Muslim clique” and, far more disturbing, Hamas, after the Palestinian organisation.

Did these soldiers truly believe the things they were saying about us and were they truly threatened by the fact that we practised our religion? Or were they just caught up in the pervasive anti-Muslim hostility that defined the mission? I believe that those who accused us of being “radical Islamists” were unable to see that someone can be a Muslim and not be a terrorist.

Most of the Christian soldiers at Guantanamo practised their religion regularly and attended weekly services. Miller was rarely missing from the front row of the chief chaplain’s service, which gave it an unstated command emphasis.

Three Christian chaplains hosted weekly Bible studies where soldiers met to discuss their faith. I am sure that they believed this made them better people and better soldiers and helped to ease the tremendous strain of life at Guantanamo. Why couldn’t they see that we were simply doing
the same?

For months Orlich watched me and the other Muslims who regularly attended my religious services. He was particularly concerned with Ahmad whose “case” was assigned to Lance Wega,
a young civilian agent from the Air Force Office of Special Investigations.

Investigators twice surreptitiously entered Ahmad’s living quarters. They took photographs of the house, copied his telephone records and mirrored the hard drive on his computer.

Microsoft was instructed to store Ahmad’s e-mails and records of his internet activity without his knowledge.

“You are requested to not disclose the existence of this request to the subscriber or any other person,” the letter to Microsoft stated. “Any such disclosure could subject you to criminal liability for obstruction of justice.”

Many Muslim personnel came to me to share concerns that things just didn’t feel right. Staff Sergeant Mohammad Tabassum, a no-nonsense type of guy in his mid-forties, told me that he had been cleaning out a cupboard in his house on the base and discovered a listening device hidden inside.

Ahmad then told me that his security clearance had been suspended. He was the last person I thought would come under suspicion; he was a loyal American and an exceptional soldier, the best translator in the camp.

When Ahmad’s tour of duty came to an end, he left with great excitement, heading for Syria to be married. He and his fiancée had been forced to postpone the wedding when his deployment at Guantanamo was extended. His mother, who had recently recovered from cancer, was to meet Ahmad at the airport in London and then fly with him to Damascus.

A few days after Ahmad left, however, we heard that he had been arrested in Jacksonville, Florida, when he got off the plane from Guantanamo. Nobody knew why or what had happened to him.

After a few weeks news arrived that Tariq Hashim, an air force captain who had been on the same plane, had also been arrested. The FBI had taken both of them. Then we had heard that another member of our prayer group, Petty Officer Samir Hejab, a navy cook, had been arrested as he left Guantanamo at the end of his deployment.

Suddenly it seemed as if every Muslim at Guantanamo was being detained on reaching American soil. Were we all going to be arrested and jailed without explanation?

In the midst of this confusion, I decided that it was time for me to take a break from Guantanamo. Every trooper was allowed a short vacation and by late August I was ready for mine. I felt overjoyed at the idea of seeing my family again. But I also was growing more concerned by the day that something suspicious was happening behind the scenes.

“Have you heard anything about Muslim personnel being arrested recently?” I asked Orlich.

He looked me in the eye. “Nothing,” he told me.

“The situation is strange,” I said to him. “There’s a lot of rumours and I’m wondering if I’m next.”

Orlich smiled and put his hand on my shoulder, “Now why would anyone want to arrest you, chaplain?”

I persisted: “Because I am the Muslim chaplain and the one who leads these three missing Muslims in prayer.”

Orlich just laughed off my concerns.

© James Yee and Aimee Molloy 2005

Adapted from For God And Country by James Yee with Aimee Molloy to be published by PublicAffairs