James Yee spent 76 days in his private cell, pacing back and forth, wondering if he was destined for a life spent behind bars, or even worse, a life cut short by the death penalty.

Courtesy Capt. James Yee was a Muslim chaplain at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, military prison.

THE RUNDOWN WHAT: James Yee's “An Inside Look at Guantanamo Bay” WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 2 WHERE: Trinity's Stieren Theater, One Trinity Place HOW MUCH: Free INFO: (210) 999-8318

He had graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1990, risen to the rank of captain in the U.S. Army and, as a converted Muslim, been appointed to serve as a Muslim chaplain at the “enemy combatant” prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. As a chaplain, Yee — who was born in New Jersey — ministered to Muslim prisoners who were terror suspects.

And yet, because of a slew of accusations that later proved false, Yee himself became the prisoner.

“I didn't know what to think at the time,” he said. “I did a lot of pacing around my cell, not knowing what was going to happen.”

He does, however, have his reasons for why he believed it happened.

“For one, I was a Muslim American in a post-9-11 era where Islamaphobia is rampant,” Yee said. “They saw me and other American Muslims in Guantanamo reading the Quran (Islam's religious text) the same way as the prisoners, and they saw us as the enemy.”

Yee will speak of his Guantanamo Bay experience on Tuesday, Oct. 2, at Trinity's Stieren Theater, an event that is free and open to the public.

“I'm very much against cruel and inhuman, degrading treatment (of prisoners) while in U.S. custody,” he said. “That was a big problem when I was there.”

So Yee voiced concerns to his superiors. Not long after, in September of 2003, Yee was arrested on suspicion of aiding the enemy and espionage, though those were later reduced to a lesser charge of mishandling classified information.

Following his arrest, Yee was transferred to a prison in South Carolina, where he alleges having experiencing similar treatment to the Muslim prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Yee said he was shackled, placed in solitary confinement and subjected to sensory deprivation, in which “blackout” goggles were placed over his eyes and earmuffs over his ears.

“At one point, a military prosecutor threatened me with the death penalty,” Yee says. “I was being treated like an enemy combatant, and it was frightening because I knew that at any given point, the United States government might take away my legal and human rights.”

That never happened.

Instead, the charges against Yee were dropped in March 2004, as the U.S. government cited “national security concerns that would arise from the release of the evidence” in the pending case. He was cleared to return to work and did just that, but the stress became too much to bear.

So he resigned Jan. 7, 2005, received an honorable discharge and left the Army for good.

Yee has been making his opinions known ever since, which included penning a book — “For God and Country: Faith and Patriotism Under Fire” — in October of 2005. Among those many opinions is the notion that the prison at Guantanamo Bay should be shut down permanently.

“Closing it would be a huge first step in the right direction, because Guantanamo has really hurt the credibility of the United States,” Yee said. “It's so bad, and it will forever be a symbol of hypocrisy.”

Yee has plenty of supporters in that assertion, including the American Civil Liberties Union, which has long criticized the U.S. government for what it believes to be prisoner abuse at Guantanamo Bay.

“Guantanamo Bay has operated far too long under a shroud of secrecy,” said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the ACLU, in a May statement. “The global community and the American public have rightfully lost their trust in the U.S. government after countless reports of abuses and injustices at Guantanamo ..... Guantanamo remains a legal black hole.”

CLINT HALE | 210SA