To tread among the “worst” of us can bring out the worst in us.

Or so learnt James Yusuf Yee when he saw a cell door at Guantanamo Bay detention centre suddenly creak open some 20 yards away during one of his daily rounds at a prison block as resident Muslim chaplain. Drilled to think that these were hardcore terrorists who would slit his throat at any given chance, Yee froze in his tracks.

Then, an unexpected thing happened. A head peered out, and a fleeting moment later, a limping man came out shouting: “Yusuf! Go get the guard. He forgot to lock my cell. If he doesn’t come and lock my cell, that guard is going to get himself in a world of trouble.” The detainee limped back in. The negligent guard locked the door. What should have been a life threatening situation was concluded uneventfully in mere moments.

This powerful episode was among several to have left Yee questioning not just his assumptions about the enemy, but also the morality of the American operation at Guantanamo. “To me, these guys were all terrorists. That guy could have attacked me and slit my throat,” says the 40-year-old third generation American Chinese Muslim convert in a sarcastic sneer. “But that was not what happened.”

His hitherto set views of the good and bad guys became even more challenged in another incident. Yee recounts how a different detainee who, after walking out of a cell that was again accidentally unlocked, tried to trap unsuspecting guards conducting a search in an adjacent cell. But he was quickly overpowered. After he was cuffed, a guard kept beating that detainee’s head with a metal military radio unit until his colleagues had to pull him off the person. That detainee had to be taken to an infirmary for treatment.

Talking of his experiences during the ten months between 2002 and 2003 when he was at Gitmo, Yee's narratives are captivating. But such brazen accounts of life inside Gitmo could never have reached the public’s ears just five years back. In 2002, when "Gitmo" was first used to hold Muslim detainees, it was sold to the world as a place where prisoners were treated humanely, says Yee. Visitors would be shown to an empty cell whose floors had been mopped and waxed to the point that it shone. Within reach of the bed are a sink and an in-ground toilet so answering Nature’s call is hardly a chore. This was the almost picturesque view of “Hotel Guantanamo.”

But the reality is far from this, says Yee. At Camp Delta where he was stationed, detainees were only allowed a 15-minute recreation time—time which also included a shower—every four to five days. But he was most unnerved by accounts of religious abuses. Yee recounts that he learnt Muslim prisoners were forced to prostrate themselves in the centre of a pentagram drawn on the floor as they would in prayer. The interrogator would then scream at them: “Satan is your God now.”

Even more horrifying, Guantanamo Bay was not just home to adult detainees – there were also juveniles aged between 15 and 18 years, as well as minors between 12 and 14 years. But while the latter group was housed in a specific camp called Camp Iguana—an apartment-like facility with guards—and were even accorded education, they were not free from being interrogated. “Their being there was wrong. Being subjected to interrogation by military psychologists is also very wrong,” Yee laments.

Yee himself suffered a similar traumatic experience. Although he had earned official praise for his work in Gitmo, Yee was arrested in 2003 for allegedly possessing classified documents. Levelled with charges of capital offences such as aiding the enemy, Yee spent 76 days in solitary confinement at a US Naval Brig in South Carolina. But these charges were later dropped in March 2004 on the pretext that releasing evidence would put US national security at risk. So he found himself reinstated, but decided to leave the US military with an honourable discharge a month later, preferring instead to conduct talks about his Gitmo experience.

Some four years—and four suicides—later, the number of detainees at Gitmo has come down to about 250 from 650 when he was chaplain there. In his first interview since being elected, US president-elect Obama revealed that there are a dozen juvenile detainees still being held at Gitmo.

But Yee is working hard to campaign for its closure. So, after being elected a Democrat delegate for the state of Washington, he cast a nominating ballot in favour of then Democrat nominee, Barack Obama, over Hillary Clinton. “Obama was the only candidate who was saying: 'I am going to close Guantanamo,'” says Yee. “He was himself also a constitutional law expert who taught the subject.”

The way things are going, Yee believes he may not be disappointed. Obama has already directed his attorneys to work out how such a closure might be possible. But to put added pressure, Yee still plans to join a group of human rights advocates who are holding a 100-day nightly vigil come 20 January next year when Obama takes office. Just to make sure.