James Yee was a former U.S. army chaplain and Muslim who worked at Guantanamao Bay. He was arrested and charged with espionage, specifically to pass information from enemy combatant detainees to al Qaeda -- a charge for which he could have received the death penalty if convicted

However, the U.S. government's case against him totally collapsed. Yee has written a book about his experiences entitled For God and Country: Faith and patriotism under fire.

Some excerpts from the Democracy Now! interview:

JUAN GONZALEZ: And you say also in your book that you witnessed a real war around religion by the military against these soldiers, that the reports that have been coming out sporadically about insults or misuse of the Koran were not isolated, that you saw on a regular basis insensitivity and provocative actions by soldiers. Could you talk about that?

CHAPLAIN JAMES YEE: Right. Right. For one, as I said the detainees would tell me things that they experienced in interrogation, what they went through, and one complaint actually caused a lot of turmoil, disturbance and riots, led to suicide attempts. And that was when an interrogator actually came back into the camp from a detainee who had been interrogated, that his interrogator had actually taken the Koran and kicked it across the floor.

Now, this spread throughout the camp and upset the entire population of Muslim prisoners. They protested, and it led to mass riots and repeated suicide attempts. So, that was one thing. It got to such a bad point that even the intelligence operation had acknowledged that perhaps what that interrogator did disrupted the intelligence gathering process. Here you now have all of the detainees upset. Of course, they don't want to talk to interrogators after what had happened, so it disrupted all -- the whole operation. That was just one incident that came out with -- about the abuse of the Koran. ...

JUAN GONZALEZ: The book is For God and Country: Faith and Patriotism Under Fire. Former Chaplain James Yee. What has all of this done to your view of your life as a soldier and the service you gave to your country, the way you have been treated?

CHAPLAIN JAMES YEE: Yeah, the whole experience, the whole ordeal, which I suffered through, for one, has made me realize that there's a lot of work that needs to be done in the military to further promote diversity and religious freedom. My story is one of principle and value, and why the values of diversity and justice, religious freedom, are so important to all people living in this country. And that I hope that in writing this book that if I can in any way help prevent what happened to me from happening to anyone else, then I think that is going to be my greatest contribution.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And for the Muslims here, living here in the United States, in terms of the kind of treatment that you received, what counsel do you have to them?

CHAPLAIN JAMES YEE: Right. The whole experience, if it happens -- if it could happen to me, a third generation Chinese American who graduated from West Point, patriotically serving his country, being praised and awarded and recognized for great contributions, could land in prison for 76 days with these huge death penalty charges, it could happen to any one of us. And this is why we have to stand up for justice.