SPY CHARGES DROPPED, BUT FEAR REMAINS
By Geneive Abdo and E.A. Torriero

Chicago Tribune
May 3, 2004

Original source: Chicago Tribune (subscribers only)

OLYMPIA, Wash. -- Fears that her husband, Army Capt. James Yee, could face the death penalty have vanished. FBI agents have stopped their surprise visits to question her. Even the neighbors in their tree-lined apartment complex in this tranquil town have started to greet her again after months of treating her like a traitor to America.

Huda Yee's husband no longer faces key charges the Army had lodged against him, and he is scheduled to resume his duties as chaplain at Ft. Lewis, Wash., on Monday. But now she says the couple faces a far greater challenge: How to live as Muslims in America.

"Muslims are made to feel like the enemy. We can't go some places. There are borders to our life here," Huda Yee, a 29-year-old Palestinian from Syria, said.

"Arabs think America is a free country. That you can do whatever you want, but that's not the case," she said, as her soft voice dropped and her eyes grew sad.

Huda Yee's sentiments reflect those felt by many Muslims across the nation. They say the case against James Yee, a Muslim Army chaplain accused of spying for alleged Al Qaeda militants detained at Guantanamo Bay, has made them feel more alienated from American society, at a time of increasing hate crimes against Muslims and deteriorating relations between the United States and the broader Islamic world.

In a report to be released Monday, the Council on American-Islamic Relations said it received 1,019 claims of attacks, discrimination and racial profiling in 2003, up from 602 such complaints a year earlier.

Muslims say that if Yee, a 1990 West Point graduate could be accused, other Muslims far less accomplished face greater risk. And Muslims say there are greater reservations within their community to enter the military -- a blow to plans by the U.S. government trying to recruit Muslims and Arabs to serve in intelligence agencies and armed forces to help the Bush administration fight the war on terror.

"You can't be a true American and a Muslim at once. This is a wake-up call for all Muslims," said Ibrahim Moiz, a friend of Yee's. "We have been sleeping too long."

Others outside the Muslim community are raising questions about why the case was brought against Yee, including Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.). In a letter sent to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld last month, the senators asked that an investigation be conducted into how the Army handled the case. "The manner in which Chaplain Yee was detained and prosecuted raises serious questions about the fair and effective administration of military justice," the letter said.

The military in March dropped charges that Yee had mishandled classified documents. The original espionage allegation of spying for Guantanamo detainees, many of whom are accused of being involved with the Taliban and Al Qaeda, had already been dismissed.

As far as the government is concerned, the case is closed. "The issue has run its course. It is now resolved," said Martha Rudd, a Pentagon spokeswoman. Officers at his post have ordered him not to discuss the case.

But for many Muslims, the spy case was dubious from the start.

On Sept. 11, 2003, Huda Yee returned from Syria to meet her husband, who had been serving as a Muslim chaplain at the Guantanamo prison.

But Yee never appeared that evening. The next day, FBI agents came to the apartment and began to question Huda Yee, but they refused to tell her what had happened to her husband.

"They searched our house and wanted to take our computer, but they wouldn't tell me where my husband was," she said. "I didn't know at first if he was even alive. They told me, 'If you help us, it will help your husband.' But they were just trying to trick me."

IN THE DARK

She did not know that the day before, her husband had been arrested at the Naval Air Station in Jacksonville, Fla., on suspicion of espionage based on documents that officials said they found in his luggage. Yee was never charged with espionage, though at the time he was arrested, U.S. officials said Yee appeared to be part of a large spy ring at Guantanamo Bay.

Yee was held in solitary confinement for nearly three months.

The fact that the government's the charges were eventually dropped has led some to question the U.S. government's motivations.

"The problem with this whole case -- like so much of what is happening with the war on terrorism -- is that it appears we are overreaching," said Kevin Barry, a former military judge and retired Coast Guard captain.

"If someone wants to say the Army is going after Muslims, they can point to the Yee case," he said.

Raul Duany, a spokesman for the Army's U.S. Southern Command, defended the case.

"Given the circumstances and the information known at the time, Chaplain Yee's case was managed in a way thoroughly consistent with the Uniform Code of Military Justice," Duany said.

Eugene Fidell, Yee's lawyer, said he still does not know why his client was initially charged with mishandling classified documents.

"Nothing involved was classified," he said of the material Yee possessed. Fidell said he is asking for records and more information about the case, but military officials have not been forthcoming.

"If I were a Muslim on active duty, I would be troubled," he said.

Huda Yee said that publicly charging her husband with committing adultery was an attempt to discredit him among other Muslims. Yee, also is an imam, or cleric.

"There are generals and other officers who have been accused of adultery, but there is no media scandal about them," she said.

Yee had received a reprimand for the non-criminal charges of adultery and downloading pornography. He contested the reprimand, and Gen. James Hill, commander of the U.S. Southern Command, ruled on April 14 that the reprimand will not go on Yee's military record.

Yee, the son of Chinese immigrants who raised him as a Lutheran, converted to Islam in the 1990s.

He and his future wife met in 1997 in Damascus, where he was teaching English and studying Islam at the Abu Nour center, a school popular with Muslims around the world. They married in Syria in 1998.

Yee had been in the military before leaving for Syria, and when he returned to the U.S. in 1999, he became an Army Muslim chaplain.

ENCOURAGED BY A FRIEND

"He had a friend who told him he could really help Muslims if he became a chaplain," said Huda Yee. "That's why he did it."

The friend was Qassem Uqdah, a former gunnery sergeant, who was recruiting Muslims to become chaplains. Yee accepted the call.

Gary Solis, a former Marine Corps judge, said the government tried to discredit Yee after they had no evidence to substantiate the more serious charges against him.

On Nov. 25, when he was released from solitary confinement, he was charged with adultery and having pornography on a government computer.

"It was so obvious they were trying to get anything on Yee and make him look bad," Solis said. "They showed unbelievable insensitivity. I've tried murders that didn't get that kind of treatment."

The Yee case could discourage Muslims from entering the military, at a time when the U.S. needs personnel who understand the Islamic world and speak Arabic.

Shaheed Nuriddin, 51, a close friend and neighbor of the Yees, said, "I wouldn't join the military if I were of military age, and I'm sure many Muslims feel the same way. You don't know who the enemy is."

"This experience has given me a complete mistrust of the military leadership," said Nuriddin, a graduate of Stanford University.

There are twelve Muslim chaplains in the armed forces and 4,230 service personnel who identify themselves as Muslims as of May 2003, according to the armed forces' Chaplains' Board. Muslims in the military are allowed to observe Friday prayers and to make an annual pilgrimage to Mecca, one of the five pillars in Islam.

COMMUNITY WARY, IMAM SAYS

At the Olympia Islamic Center, comprised of a few houses in the middle of a grassy soccer field that serve as a mosque and Islamic school, Imam Mohamad Joban said the case has sent a chill through the community.

"It is difficult to be a Muslim here now," said Joban, who is from Indonesia and received his Islamic training from Al Azhar in Cairo, the seat of learning for Sunni Muslims.

Last week, Yee spoke at a mosque in Tacoma, Wash., after Joban gave the Friday sermon. "He told people 'when you see evil you must remove it. What happened to me could happen to any Muslim,' " Joban said.

That is precisely the fear felt by others. Nabil Arouz, 40, who spent most of his life in Libya, and attends the Olympia Center mosque, said the United States became a different country after Sept. 11.

"They are trying to exclude Muslims from public life. It's becoming like Libya. If Bush gets re-elected maybe I will leave."