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| Fifth Column |
| Islamic chaplain is charged as spy |
| 2003-09-20 |
| I hope the investigators did their homework on this one and just didn’t assume he was guilty. If they wind up with no case, it will do serious damage to the WOT on the home front. If he is guilty, they should throw the book at him. By Rowan Scarborough Published September 20, 2003 An Army Islamic chaplain, who counseled al Qaeda prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, naval base, has been charged with espionage, aiding the enemy and spying, The Washington Times has learned. Capt. James J. Yee, a 1990 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., was arrested earlier this month by the FBI in Jacksonville, Fla., as he arrived on a military charter flight from Guantanamo, according to a law-enforcement source. Agents confiscated several classified documents in his possession and interrogated him. He was held for two days in Jacksonville and transferred to a Navy brig in Charleston, S.C., where two Army lawyers have been assigned to his defense. The Army has charged Capt. Yee with five offenses: sedition, aiding the enemy, spying, espionage and failure to obey a general order. The Army may also charge him later with the more serious charge of treason, which under the Uniform Code of Military Justice could be punished by a maximum sentence of life. It could not be immediately learned what country or organization is suspected of receiving information from Capt. Yee. He had counseled suspected al Qaeda terrorists at Guantanamo for a lengthy period. Capt. Yee, 35, was a command chaplain for I Corps at Fort Lewis, Wash. The Army dispatched him to Cuba to attend to the spiritual needs of a growing number of captured al Qaeda and members of the Taliban, a hard-line Islamic group ousted from power in Afghanistan. Capt. Yee, of Chinese-American descent, was raised in New Jersey as a Christian. He studied Islam at West Point and converted to Islam and left the Army in the mid-1990s. He moved to Syria, where he underwent further religious training in traditional Islamic beliefs. He returned to the United States and re-entered the Army as an Islamic chaplain. He is said to be married to a Syrian woman. Capt. Yee had almost unlimited private access to detainees as part of the Defense Department’s program to provide the prisoners with religious counseling, as well as clothing and Islamic-approved meals. The law-enforcement source declined to say how much damage Capt. Yee may have inflicted on the U.S. war against Osama bin Laden’s global terror network. The source said the "highest levels" of government made the decision to arrest Capt. Yee, who had been kept under surveillance for some time. The military’s "convening authority" — the officer who would authorize criminal proceedings — is the commander of U.S. Southern Command in Miami, which oversees the prison at Guantanamo. After the September 11 attacks, Capt. Yee, one of 17 Muslim chaplains, was the subject of a number of press articles on Islam. A month after the attack on the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, he was quoted in an account by Scripps Howard News Service as saying that "an act of terrorism, the taking of innocent lives is prohibited by Islam and whoever has done this needs to be brought to justice, whether he is Muslim or not." In another account, the Voice of America News Service paraphrased Capt. Yee as saying Islam is a religion of peace and the concept of "jihad," or holy war, simply means "to struggle." "The basics, you always begin with the basics when dealing with anything," Capt. Yee was quoted as saying. "I discuss the articles of faith, what Muslims believe. The five pillars of Islam and then of course, I relate it to the events of September 11 to include some of the concepts found in Islam and how it deals with matters of war." At the Charleston brig, he joins three other notable detainees in the war on terrorism: Yaser Esam Hamdi, an American-born Saudi who fought with the Taliban; Jose Padilla, a former Chicago gang member who is charged with plotting to detonate a radioactive bomb; and Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, accused of being an al Qaeda sleeper agent. The United States classifies the detainees at Guantanamo as "enemy combatants," not prisoners of war. The Pentagon will likely hold most of them until the war on terrorism is over. |
| Posted by:penguin |
| #8 The religion of Islam IS the problem. Spare us the hue and cry, and get on with intense investigations of ALL Islamic groups in America. Make that the whole West. |
| Posted by: Scott 2003-9-20 8:00:31 PM |
| #7 Being a mole amoung a group of people that are undergoing FBI interogation, that's balls. I bet chappie had strong influence with the Base Commander that was releived for being too sympathetic to the prisoners. |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2003-9-20 2:29:52 PM |
| #6 Why he in hell are we so lenient with terrorists? Chaplains? For what? For teling them that they were right and that Allah will reward the with virgins? What we need is people telling them they were wrong and will roast in hell. Strike despair in them, mollify them and then make them speak/use them for propaganda purposes. |
| Posted by: JFM 2003-9-20 1:41:14 PM |
| #5 no pun intended but - jeesus! He lived in Syria, and got 'religious training' there? Didnt that set off the Armys alarm bells? I guess we can assume that Hamas, IJ and al qaeda know whos in the cooler at Guantanamo, which will have compromised the whole operation down there. and that is a damn shame, We could have used those guys for years as agents, now we cant use anyone whos down there. We might as well let them all go. Somebodys ass should be on the line here for two things, letting this joker in the game down there in the first place and second, revealing the fact that we know who he is. It would have been better to turn him into a double agent so we could feed the other side false information. THe best we could do at this point is show to al queada that hes told us who his contacts are by killing them publically. |
| Posted by: Frank Martin 2003-9-20 1:24:36 PM |
| #4 Conversions, Islalmic study in the Middle East, and returns as an islamofacists. Hmmm. Anyone seeing a pattern developing? Put this guy in a cell and throw away the key! |
| Posted by: Cyber Sarge (VRWC CA Chapter) 2003-9-20 11:41:03 AM |
| #3 This beauzeau was giving guidance to the people at GITMO!? Asshat |
| Posted by: Katz 2003-9-20 10:34:52 AM |
| #2 Very Not Good. He had to know the score; shoot him. |
| Posted by: Hiryu 2003-9-20 9:23:50 AM |
| #1 My guess would be that Army investigators did their homework and a half before preferring these changes. |
| Posted by: badanov 2003-9-20 8:09:58 AM |