January 19, 2004
WASHINGTON - Hatred of Muslims has become the anti-semitism of our era. The latest example of this ugly fact is the vicious prosecution by the US military of a Muslim Army chaplain, Capt. James Yee.
I call this disgraceful and shameful case, America's Dreyfus Affaire.
In 1894, a French army officer, Capt. Alfred Dreyfus, who was Jewish, was wrongfully convicted of spying on the basis of forged documents. Though evidence pointed to another officer, anti-semites in the French Army framed Dreyfus. He was given a life sentence on Devil's Island, a brutal penal colony on a malarial Caribbean island off French Guiana.
Four years later, the great French writer Emile Zola published `J'accuse' (I accuse), his famous newspaper exposé of the Dreyfus Affaire in which he demolished the case against the persecuted officer and showed how hatred of Jews had led to this outrage.
Fast forward to 2003. Captain Yee, a native of New Jersey, West Point graduate, convert to Islam, and one of the few Muslim chaplains in the US armed forces, was arrested for espionage. Yee had been chaplain at the Bush Administration's very own version of Devil's Island, the notorious Guantanamo prison camp, ministering to the 660 Muslim prisoners held there in cages.
Two Muslim-Americans working at Guantanamo as interpreters for the military, Ahmed Mehalba and Senior Airman Ahmad al-Halabi,
were arrested on suspicions of passing information to Syria and possessing classified documents. Dim-witted US Army Reserve officers at Guantanamo somehow believed they had uncovered a nefarious Syrian spy ring.
Yee had once visited Syria for religious studies. He had dinner at Guantanamo with al-Halabi and Mehalba. Given the current climate of Islamophobia and national hysteria, Yee, too, was arrested and charged with espionage, a capital offense.
Spying charges have since been dropped against Halabi, but he and Mehalba still faces other flimsy charges.
Yee was charged with spying and thrown into solitary confinement in a naval prison for two and a half months where he was reportedly chained hand and foot. Jailers refused to tell him the direction Mecca lay, so he could pray properly. Yee was denied family visits and repeatedly threatened with execution.
Capt. Yee was finally released to face court martial at Ft. Benning, Georgia, which is currently continuing. The military's case against Yee has steadily crumbled. Not a shred of evidence emerged of spying, or of foreign contacts.
After espionage charges were dropped, Yee was accused of the minor infraction of mishandling classified documents. But military prosecutors didn't even know which of the supposedly classified documents Yee had were actually classified. Most were apparently hand-written notes on his religious ministering.
The US Army's former judge advocate general. (the most senior military legal officer), John Fugh, called the Yee case `ridiculous' and said it should be speedily ended. Other legal experts and high-ranking officers term the trial a farce and travesty of justice.
But the military has continued with this preposterous show trial, unwilling to admit it was gravely mistaken in prosecuting Capt Yee — just as the French Army refused to the bitter end to admit that Capt. Dreyfus was innocent.
To cover the collapse of its ludicrous espionage case, the Army then bizarrely charged Yee with, of all things, adultery and keeping pornography.
Yee, who is married, did, in fact, have an affaire with another female officer. He may even had a copy of `Playboy' magazine or used his computer to surf the internet. Adultery is an offense under the Uniform Military Code, but only a few officers have ever been prosecuted for this Victorian offense - otherwise a good part of the senior ranks of the armed forces would be in jail. Perhaps the military has forgotten that its former commander-in-chief, President Bill Clinton, also violated this silly and unconstitutional regulation.
Anyway, so what if Yee had a liason. That's none of the government's business.
As a former member of the US Army, I know there is not much real justice in so-called military justice. It's up to the president and Congress to order the Pentagon generals who approved this sordid case to dismiss the charges against the American Dreyfus and present him with an enormous apology. If anyone belongs behind bars, it is the cretins who accused Yee of espionage. But, as all soldiers know, the military always covers its backside.
If Capt Yee was any religion except Muslim, his prosecution — persecution is a more apt term — would have raised a public outcry. But the Bush Administration's paranoia and relentless anti-Islamic fervor, and the growing hate campaign directed against Muslims by the president's fundamentalist Christian and neo-conservative allies, has legitimized persecution of Muslim-Americans, who now live in a state of fear that begins to resemble the growing terror felt by German Jews in the early 1930's.
The Yee affaire is only one of a large number of cases in which Muslims have been charged by the government with non-existent or wildly exaggerated offenses, then forced to admit guilt under threats of life terms, or even execution.
Capt Yee courageously refused to be intimidated into confessing to crimes he did not commit. His only serious offense, according to the evidence so far available, was being a caring Muslim chaplain in a Devil's Island created to terrify and punish Muslims.
Foreign Correspondent
