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In the "legal black hole" that America had created on a little strip of Cuba—outside of such inconveniences as the Geneva Conventions and both US and international human rights law—vengeance and intelligence gathering came first. The fact that only 8 percent of the 517 prisoners still in Guantánamo in 2006 had any alleged links to Al Qaeda made no difference. They just might have some information on something, somewhere, somehow. It was in this world that detainees who had undertaken the Hajj were linked to Osama bin Laden because they'd once prayed in the same building, Mecca's Grand Mosque, which hosts approximately three million pilgrims each year.Detainees would often tell Yee about being disturbed by guards while they were praying and about having the water turned off before prayer, so as to stop them from purifying themselves. A number of detainees even got upset that Yee, who they trusted, couldn't get them released. "I had to explain that it's way above my pay grade, that I don't have the luxury of giving direct advice to the president of the United States," he jokes. The chaplain, a vital source of information regarding the thoughts and feelings of the detainees, was soon being told about some of the darkest aspects of Gitmo."I was aware of a lot of what was going on in interrogation sessions. A prisoner would come back from a session, tell the other prisoners what had happened and then there'd be a riot in response and a lot of the time, I would be sent in to find out what was happening and why," Yee says. The torture he witnessed and was told about is varied. According to the detainees, they had menstrual blood smeared on them; they were made to prostrate themselves in the middle of a "Satanic circle" and then screamed at; they were regularly dragged through the gravel "like dogs"; sexually intimidated; hung in stress positions; deprived of sleep; had their teeth broken; had their Qur'ans desecrated; were severely beaten… the list goes on."I had to explain to the detainees that I didn't have a direct line to the president."
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And yet, even following what he was put through, the former chaplain was sad to go. "After my case was finished, I felt like I was taken from Guantánamo when there was still a lot of work that needed to be done in terms of stopping torture and human rights abuses," he says. His record had been wiped clean and he could have remained in the military but he left, in part, so he would be able to tell his story."There are very few people who have been to Guantánamo who speak openly and publicly about what goes on there. The military has threatened, or indicated to people who serve there, that everything and anything that goes on there is classified, which is simply not the case." For years, Yee's travel has been monitored and curtailed and he says he was, until this year, detained as a matter of course every time he came back to the US from international trips.Since his time at Guantánamo and in prison ended, the former chaplain has been "trying to recover from post-traumatic stress." He was kept in solitary confinement in prison and underwent the same sensory deprivation and shackling he'd seen at Guantánamo Bay. In the 2008 presidential election he was a National Delegate for Barack Obama, pledging to support him "based on his pledge to close Guantánamo and him being a constitutional lawyer." But Obama has, of course, failed to follow through on that pledge. There may be a series of factors at play but Yee believes that "the blame still falls on Obama. One Commander-in-Chief opened Guantánamo Bay with a stroke of a pen. Another can close it with a stroke of a pen."Today, just like George W. Bush, the man responsible for Guantánamo Bay, James Yee has turned to art. He works with Combat Paper, a community project that teaches veterans to make paper from their old uniforms and use that paper for their own artwork. For Yee and for the veterans, it is a much-needed form of therapy.Follow Oscar on Twitter."There are very few people who have been to Guantánamo who speak openly and publicly about what goes on there."