Neil A. Lewis / The New York Times & Brian Knowlton / International Herald Tribune – 2005-10-12 08:58:37
www.nytimes.com/2005/10/03/politics/03yee.html
In New Book Ex-Chaplain at Guantánamo Tells of Abuses
Neil A. Lewis / The New York Times
WASHINGTON (October 3, 2005) — James J. Yee, a former Muslim chaplain at the Guantánamo Bay detention center, says in a new book that military authorities knowingly created an atmosphere in which guards would feel free to abuse prisoners.
Mr. Yee, 37, is a former Army captain and a West Point graduate who was arrested and imprisoned in 2003 on suspicion of espionage. It was a case that, in the end, proved groundless, to the embarrassment of the Pentagon.
Mr. Yee was ultimately deemed guilty of minor administrative charges involving adultery and the presence of pornography on his computer, and given an honorable discharge. But those convictions, too, were later dropped.
The book, For God and Country: Faith and Patriotism Under Fire, offers Mr. Yee’s first public comments on what occurred at the camp while he was there.
In the book, to be published this week by Public Affairs, Mr. Yee writes that Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, the prison’s commanding officer — who would later become Mr. Yee’s chief antagonist in pressing suspicions of espionage against him — regularly incited anger toward the prisoners with emotional slogans delivered to the troops.
Mr. Yee writes that when General Miller visited the prison, he would tell the guards sternly, “The war is on.” That remark and similar comments, Mr. Yee writes, were designed to let soldiers know they were operating in a combat environment where it was understood that rules protecting detainees were relaxed and instances of mistreatment would be overlooked.
“Soldiers know that when you are in combat there’s considerable leniency in the rules,” Mr. Yee said in an interview, “and the leaders, including General Miller, wanted to put them in that frame of mind.” He said that General Miller told him that he remained deeply angry over the loss of military friends who were killed in the attack on the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. The general, who is now assigned to duty in the Pentagon, declined through a spokesman to comment on the book.
Mr. Yee says the guards were constantly reminded of the Sept. 11 attacks by General Miller and others, and they “retaliated in whatever way they could” against the detainees. “In some cases, punishment often meant physical force,” he writes.
Mr. Yee describes how, to extract prisoners from their cells, soldiers used a procedure known as “irfing”: a team in heavy body armor, called an Immediate Reaction Force, would physically subdue the prisoners and remove them from their cells.
He writes that the irfing operations were sometimes needed to control unruly prisoners, but “they were doing it so frequently, so regularly at Guantánamo that I came to believe it was solely to rile the prisoners.”
He says some prisoners were irfed because of such violations as having extra plastic foam cups in their cells; the procedure would later be described as necessary to “retrieve contraband.”
The military has said repeatedly that incidents of abuse have occurred, but that they are isolated and that all accusations are thoroughly investigated. In the book, Mr. Yee writes that as he got to know prisoners through his chaplain duties, he became increasingly certain that many were not the hardened terrorists that the authorities had depicted them to be.
He says that while he was chaplain to about 600 detainees, the authorities regularly arranged for him to meet reporters and Congressional visitors to demonstrate the military’s efforts to accommodate the inmates’ religion. He came to believe, however, that he was being exploited to present a false image about the camp’s atmosphere.
He writes that he rarely witnessed physical abuse of the sort that has since become a point of contention between the military on one side and human rights groups and defense lawyers on the other. But he says that in his tenure at Guantánamo, he regularly heard about prisoners being beaten and humiliated in their interrogation sessions.
He says he was told of the abuse by detainees and by Arabic-speaking translators who were present at many of the interrogations. He writes that these accounts were given to him months before similar accusations became public through press reports and the disclosure of internal memorandums by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
In the interview, Mr. Yee declined to discuss the details of the adultery and pornography charges against him, except to say they were used to humiliate him because the military was embarrassed over its handling of his case. He also does not go into the details of the charges in his book.
Mr. Yee was reared as a Lutheran in New Jersey and graduated from West Point in 1990. He converted to Islam and left the Army in the early 1990’s, returning later as a chaplain. He now lives with his family in Olympia, Washington, where he is studying for a doctorate in international relations.
Posted in accordance with Title 17, US Code, for noncommercial, educational purposes.
Bush Repeats Threat to Veto Torture Curb
Brian Knowlton / International Herald Tribune
WASHINGTON (October 6, 2005) — The White House repeated an earlier veto threat Thursday after the Senate voted by an overwhelming bipartisan margin for a measure to prevent mistreatment of prisoners held by the US military.
The 90-to-9 vote to ban “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” of anyone in US government custody was one of the sharpest political rebukes in Washington of a system under which abuses occurred in Iraq and Afghanistan and at the Guantánamo naval base in Cuba.
The abuses, documented in photographs of the humiliation of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq by their US jailers, provoked furious reactions in the Muslim world, brought angry condemnations around the world and reportedly fueled acts of violence in Iraq.
The vote late Wednesday came on an amendment to a $440 billion defense budget bill. Forty-six Republicans, including the majority leader, Bill Frist of Tennessee, joined 43 Democrats and an independent, reflecting unusually scant Senate support for the White House argument that the measure would unduly constrict Americans who are leading the difficult fight against terrorism.
The Senate passed the measure by a margin well beyond the two-thirds required to override a presidential veto. But the White House, while reiterating the veto threat Thursday, appeared sanguine about the matter.
“The House legislation doesn’t include that language,” noted Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman. Suggesting that such a provision seemed unlikely to survive the conferences in which the Senate and House iron out legislative differences, McClellan said, “We will continue working with Congress to address this issue.”
The amendment would require troops conducting interrogations to limit themselves to a list of techniques authorized in a new army field manual.
The unexpectedly one-sided vote followed an impassioned plea from a Republican senator, John McCain of Arizona, who, as a young navy aviator was shot down over North Vietnam and then tortured by his captors.
McCain argued that Americans taken prisoner in war would suffer if American jailors did not maintain internationally accepted standards. He had the backing of some former high-ranking military officers, including Colin Powell and John Shalikashvili, both former heads of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
McCain, the measure’s main sponsor, argued: “We need a clear, consistent standard.” He added: “Many of my comrades were subjected to very cruel, very inhumane and degrading treatment, a few of them even unto death. But every one of us – every single one of us – knew and took great strength from the belief that we were different from our enemies.”
McCain to Keep Up Pressure
Eric Schmitt of The New York Times reported earlier:
Senator Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican, questioned why the White House would oppose a measure that codifies military procedures and policies and reaffirms a ban against torturing detainees. “It is time for Congress, which represents the people, to clarify and set the rules for detention and interrogation of our enemies,” he said.
Opposing the effort, Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska, said that requiring American troops to follow procedures in the army manual was not practical in the current war environment. “The techniques vary upon the circumstances and the physical location of people involved,” Stevens said.
Armed with the strong Senate vote, however, McCain is expected to keep the pressure on in the public arena and when the spending bill goes to a conference committee.
McCain and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina offered the same proposal during the summer as the Senate worked on a bill setting Pentagon policy. But Frist scuttled that legislation, in part because of White House opposition.
In July, the White House dispatched Vice President Dick Cheney to Capitol Hill to lobby McCain, Graham and Senator John Warner of Virginia personally.
This week, White House officials not only pressed McCain to modify his measure, but approached sympathetic Senate Republicans to work against the amendment.
The vote drew applause from human rights organizations. “Senator McCain’s amendments are a key step toward the restoration of the military’s traditional prohibition against torture and inhumane treatment,” said Leonard Rubenstein, executive director of Physicians for Human Rights.
Copyright © 2005 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com
Posted in accordance with Title 17, US Code, for noncommercial, educational purposes.
