Guilty of being Muslim?

James Yee spent 76 days in solitary confinement at a South Carolina naval prison.

His bare cell contained a toilet, mattress and two books. The first was a prison handbook every prisoner was required to read. The second was the Quran, the Muslim holy book that led Yee from a promising career in the military to accusations of spying against the United States.

"What happened to me is a gross miscarriage of justice," he said in an interview.

James Yee will share the story of his battle for freedom against the Army, FBI, and other high profile government institutions tonight at 7:30 in room 131 of Hitchcock Hall.

In 1991, Yee was fresh out of the Army's prestigious officer training school at West Point when he arrived in Saudi Arabia. The New Jersey native grew up as a Lutheran Christian, but in Saudi Arabia his beliefs changed. Prior experience with Islam in the country and previous dialogue with Muslims had intrigued him, and he decided he wanted to become a Muslim chaplain for the Army. He found belief in Islam similar to Christianity.

In Islam, he worshipped one God, a "reconfirmation of the monotheistic faith I was brought up in," he said.

A few years later, he transferred to the Army Reserve to pursue his studies. He arrived in religiously moderate but politically radical Syria in 1995 to study, where he met his future wife, a young Palestinian woman, Huda. In 1998 they moved to the U.S. and had a baby soon after. Everything was looking good for Yee, who completed his chaplain preparation and was promoted to captain. Then Sept. 11 happened.

Like many Muslims, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 worried him.

"I was really concerned about the backlash, especially after seeing the bombing in Oklahoma City by McVeigh immediately resulted in the backlash against Muslims, who had nothing to do with that attack," Yee said, referring to the 1995 attack of the Federal Building in Oklahoma committed by Timothy McVeigh, a militant white Christian American.

Nevertheless, as Muslim chaplains are few in the military, Yee was pressed into action, informing soldiers at his base about his religion. Most of them were tolerant toward the faith, he said. Some of that changed in late 2002, when Yee was assigned to the infamous Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba.

Lindsey Swanson/THE LANTERN Graphic by Lindsey Swanson.

Guantanamo Bay holds hundreds of prisoners from dozens of different countries, many of them alleged by the government to be al-Qaida terrorists, aides of Osama bin Laden. The camp was controversial in its interrogation and holding methods, and some of the prisoners were later discovered not to be terrorists. Yee was aware of the controversy when he arrived. But he was the type of military officer who always gave 100 percent to any challenge, he said. He made many contributions in the 10 months he worked there, advising Muslim prisoners and his colleagues, many of whom were American Muslim translators.

Others didn't see it that way.

Throughout Yee's time at Guantanamo, a few colleagues noticed different things about him and some of his Muslim colleagues, the bases' "Muslim clique," that, to them, didn't add up. For example, after several prisoners complained of abuse to their Quran by guards, Yee helped develop a rule that non-Muslims could only handle the book during extreme circumstances. This upset some guards, but for the wrong reasons, Yee said.

"The guards that didn't like this policy were the type of guards who wanted to instigate the prisoners and wanted to abuse the prisoners," he said.

The Quran has a statement that it should be touched only by the purified, said professor Georges Tamer, the M.S. Sofia Chair in Arabic Studies at Ohio State. "It is a matter of interpretation what that actually means: physical or spiritual purity," he said in an e-mail.

In his lecture, presented by the Ohio Union Activities Board, Yee talks about the religious persecution he said he witnessed, including desecration of the Quran, sexual humiliation and physical abuse of prisoners.

"I saw the results of that," he said, witnessing "prisoners who ended up with broken teeth, bruises on their wrists."

He reported his claims to his immediate superiors, who had open ears, he said. But those at higher levels of command, as well was people in intelligence gathering, were "very resistant to hearing" Yee's concerns about prisoner abuse and poor conditions, he claims.

There were other concerns from Yee's co-workers. A colleague thought it was suspicious that Yee had traveled to Syria to study.

Although Syria is not known for its Islamic radicalism, the U.S. has had icy relations with Syria because of its brutal dictatorship and hostility toward Israel, said OSU political science professor Bill Liddle.

After incidents like this and seemingly sympathetic speech and behavior toward the prisoners, intelligence and law enforcement agencies began to investigate Yee. Little things kept adding up, like classified documents being inappropriately moved by Yee. A possible covert communication scheme with the prisoners concocted by Yee was investigated, too. Investigators thought he might be aiding the prisoners by delivering books with secret messages.

Although he received rave reviews for his work from his superiors, a case was being built against him and a few colleagues, all of whom are Muslim men.

After serving nearly a year, Yee's tour ended and he flew to Jacksonville, Fla., in September 2003 to meet his family. Yee had no idea he was being investigated. At the airport, he was pulled aside and arrested. Suddenly, he went from dutiful military officer to a suspect.

"I felt that my input was being received until all that came to a terrible 180 degree change of direction, and I was suddenly accused of crimes I didn't commit," Yee said.