[Peace-discuss] Fwd: [SRRTAC-L:11745] Wen Ho Lee Redux?

[Alfred Kagan]

>Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2003 14:33:02 -0400 (EDT)
>From: Frederick W Stoss <fstoss at buffalo.edu>
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>To: SRRT Action Council <srrtac-l at ala.org>
>Subject: [SRRTAC-L:11745] Wen Ho Lee Redux?
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>FYI. Fred Stoss
>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2003 13:58:42 -0400
>From: Moyrebel at aol.com
>
><MC1>bc-chaplain^(ATTN: News editors) (Includes optional
>trim)<MC0><QC>
><MC1>//Muslim Army Chaplain Is Under
>Investigation//(Washn)<MC0><QC>
><MC1>By Bob Drogin<MC0><QC>
><MC1>(c) 2003, Los Angeles Times<MC0><QC>
>     WASHINGTON ’Äî Last Nov. 15, the Guantanamo Bay Gazette, a
>newspaper
>for American troops at the U.S. Naval Base in Cuba, published what it
>billed as ’ÄùA few words from the Chaplain.’Äú<QA>
>     In it, Chaplain James Y. Yee, an Army captain, sought to explain
>the significance of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting. Among
>other restrictions, Yee wrote, is a ban on ’Äùwrong behavior of any
>sort.’Äú<QA>
>     Today, Yee ’Äî one of the most prominent of the military’Äôs few
>Muslim chaplains ’Äî sits in a Navy brig in South Carolina under
>investigation for potentially aiding the enemy, specifically the 660
>al-Qaida suspects, Taliban fighters and alleged terrorists imprisoned
>without charge at Guantanamo Bay.
>     Military investigators confiscated diagrams about the military
>detention facility and other documents from Yee after the 35-year-old
>West Point graduate got off a military charter plane on Sept. 10 in
>Jacksonville, Fla. FBI agents and military teams then interviewed Yee,
>also known as Yousef Yee, for several hours before he was arrested.
>     ’ÄùThe Army knew of his travel plans,’Äú said Jeff Westcott, an FBI
>spokesman in Jacksonville. ’ÄùThey were already looking at him. So when
>they knew he was coming here, they contacted us. We participated in
>the interview ... Based on that, the army decided to put him under
>arrest.’Äú<QA>
>     Yee has not been charged with any crime, said Tom Crosson, a
>spokesman for the Pentagon’Äôs Southern Command in Miami that
>oversees
>the Guantanamo base. ’ÄùWe’Äôre waiting to see the outcome of the
>investigation,’Äú Crosson said.
>     On Sept. 15, a military magistrate determined there was sufficient
>reason to detain Yee. Under military law, Yee can be held for up to
>two months without being charged. Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, commander
>of the task force that runs the detention center at Guantanamo Bay,
>ultimately will decide whether Yee will face a military court martial.
>     Yee’Äôs case already has raised concerns among Muslim groups and
>civil rights advocates.
>     The leader of one Muslim organization said Sunday he had received
>angry calls suggesting that Yee might have been trying to ’Äùdocument
>abuses’Äú at Guantanamo Bay.
>     ’ÄùMaybe he was documenting the size of the cells, or had a list of
>who was underage,’Äú said the official, who asked not to be identified.
>     ’ÄùWe just hope that the case is not enveloped in a shroud of
>secrecy in terms of secret tribunals and secret evidence,’Äú said
>Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic
>Relations, a Washington-based civil rights advocacy group. ’ÄùLet all
>the facts come out in the public.’Äú<QA>
>     In a statement, the American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans
>Affairs Council, a Virginia-based group that helps pick and train
>Muslim chaplains for the military, sent ’Äùprayers and concerns’Äú to
>Yee’Äôs family and said it would hold a news conference when it knew
>more about Yee’Äôs case.
>     Yee, the son of Chinese immigrants, was raised as a Lutheran in a
>middle class suburban neighborhood in Springfield, N.J. A stocky man
>with thick glasses, he attended the U.S. military academy at West
>Point, and graduated in 1990. He reportedly converted to Islam the
>following year.
>     After finishing airborne school at Fort Knox, Ky., Yee became a
>fire control officer for Patriot missiles during the Persian Gulf War.
>But he then left the army and moved to Damascus, Syria, to study
>Arabic and Islam for four years. While there, he reportedly married a
>Syrian woman and changed his name to Yousef.
>     Although Muslims have served in the U.S. armed forces since the
>Civil War, the first Muslim chaplain was accredited in 1993 and the
>military opened its first permanent Islamic prayer center in 1997 in
>Norfolk, Va. Today, there are 17 Muslim chaplains among the 3,150
>chaplains in the U.S. military. All chaplains provide spiritual
>guidance to followers of all faiths.
>     Still, Yee’Äôs re-entry into the military as a Muslim chaplain was so
>noteworthy that it was later included in a news release put out by the
>U.S. Embassy in Tokyo after the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
>    
>     <MC1>(Begin optional trim)<MC0><QC>
>    
>     Voice of America, the official voice of the U.S. government
>overseas, similarly profiled Yee after the Sept. 11 attacks as the
>Bush administration sought to counter charges that U.S. policy was
>anti-Muslim.
>     Yee, then the Army’Äôs only Muslim chaplain on the West Coast, was
>assigned to the 700 men and women in the 29th Signal Battalion at Fort
>Lewis, outside Tacoma, Wash. He was quoted as saying he tried to
>provide spiritual guidance to Muslim troops in the U.S. military, as
>well as to educate non-Muslims about the tenets of Islam.
>     ’ÄùThe root word of Islam means peace,’Äú he said. ’ÄùSo in that
>sense, Islam is peace in the sense that when you submit yourself to
>God, this brings peace. And when you follow the laws of Islam, this
>brings about peace.’Äú<QA>
>    
>     <MC1>(End optional trim)<MC0><QC>
>    
>     In an interview with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Yee said,
>’ÄùMost people want to know how Sept. 11 fits into Islam. What happened
>is un-Islamic and categorically denied by a great majority of Muslim
>scholars around the world.’Äú<QA>
>     Yee was posted to the Guantanamo naval station last November and
>quickly had an impact ’Äî especially in Camp Delta, a 20-acre
>high-security prison area for terrorism suspects from about 40
>countries who have been detained since the war in Afghanistan.
>    
>     <MC1>(Begin optional trim)<MC0><QC>
>    
>     Although the International Committee of the Red Cross regularly
>visits the camp to check conditions, Amnesty International, Human
>Rights Watch and other groups have campaigned for improved conditions
>and to change the detainee’Äôs legal status to that of prisoners of war,
>from their current, legally murky status as ’Äùunlawful combatants.’Äú<QA>
>Scores of prisoners have sought to commit suicide.
>    
>     <MC1>(End optional trim)<MC0><QC>
>    
>     Crosson, the military spokesman, said Yee had daily access to the
>detainees. Yee offered Muslim prayer services each Friday, and ensured
>that each Muslim had a copy of the holy Koran to read in his cell.
>     Yee also helped rearrange the meal schedule so detainees could
>observe the daylight fast during Ramadan, and showed skeptical
>detainees a certificate in Arabic certifying that the meat they ate
>was Halal, or prepared under Islamic strictures.
>     Five times a day, Yee played a recorded version of the Muslim call
>to prayer on camp loudspeakers.
>     ’ÄùWhat they hear is the actual call as it’Äôs heard in either Mecca
>or Medina (Islam’Äôs two holiest cities), depending on the CD I choose
>to play that day,’Äú Yee told visiting reporters in April.
>     Yee also ministered to U.S. troops of Muslim faith.
>     ’ÄùThe 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’Äô religious needs,’Äú chaplain Herbert
>Heavner told another base paper in March.
>    
>
>    
>     <QL>
>     <MC1>AP-NY-09-22-03 1306EDT<MC0><QL>


-- 


Al Kagan
African Studies Bibliographer and Professor of Library Administration
Africana Unit, Room 328
University of Illinois Library
1408 W. Gregory Drive
Urbana, IL 61801, USA

tel. 217-333-6519
fax. 217-333-2214
e-mail. akagan at uiuc.edu