Desecration of Quran at US detention centres not rare Web posted at: 5-23-2005 2:13:3 The Peninsula, Qatar Source: LA Times-Washington Post
WASHINGTON: Senior Bush administration officials reacted with outrage to a Newsweek report that US interrogators had desecrated the Holy Quran at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility, and the magazine retracted the story last week. But allegations of disrespectful treatment of IslamÕs holy book are far from rare. An examination of hearing transcripts, court records and government documents, as well as interviews with former detainees, their lawyers, civil liberties groups and US military personnel, reveals dozens of accusations involving the Quran, not only at Guantanamo, but also at American-run detention facilities in Afghanistan and Iraq. The allegations, both at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere, contain detailed descriptions of what Muslim prisoners said was mishandling of the Quran Ñ sometimes in a deliberately provocative manner. In one instance, an Iraqi detainee alleged that a soldier had a guard dog carry a copy of the Quran in its mouth. In another, guards at Guantanamo were said to have scrawled obscenities inside Qurans. Other prisoners said Quran were kicked across floors, stomped on and thrown against walls. One said a soldier urinated on his copy, and others said guards ridiculed the religious text, declaring that AllahÕs words would not save detainees. Some of the alleged incidents appear to have been inadvertent or to have resulted from US personnelÕs lack of understanding about how sensitive Muslim detainees might be to mishandling of the Quran. In several cases, for instance, copies were allegedly knocked about during scuffles with prisoners who refused to leave their cells. In other cases, the allegations seemed to describe instances of deliberate disrespect. ÒThey tore it and threw it on the floor. They urinated on it. They walked on top of the Quran. They used the Quran like a carpet,Ó former detainee Mohammed Mazouz said of guards at Guantanamo Bay. ÒWe told them not to do it. We begged. And then they did it some more,Ó said Mazouz, a Moroccan who was seized in Pakistan soon after the September 11 person attacks. Recently released, he described the alleged incidents in a telephone interview from his home in Marrakech. Ahmad Naji Abid Ali Dulaymi, who was held at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq for 10 months, singled out a soldier or noncommissioned officer known to detainees only as ÒFoxÓ. He said prisoners were forced to sit naked, were licked by dogs, and were soaked in cold water and then forced to sit in front of a powerful air-conditioner. ÒBut frankly,Ó he said, Òthe worst insult and humiliation they were doing to us, especially for the religious ones among us, is when they, especially Fox, tore up holy books of Quran and threw them away into the trash or into dirty water. ÒAlmost every day, Fox used to take a brand new Quran, and tear off the plastic cover in front of us and then throw it away into the trash container.Ó The hunger strikes erupted in 2002 at Guantanamo when word swept the camp that Qurans were being desecrated. In response, the Defence Department issued four pages of guidelines instructing soldiers in the proper way of Òinspecting and handlingÓ Quran. FBI memo reports Guantanamo guards flushing Koran
--------------- ABC News.com May 25, 2005 Ñ WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An FBI agent wrote in a 2002 document made public on Wednesday that a detainee held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had accused American jailers there of flushing the Koran down a toilet. The release of the declbuttified document came the week after the Bush administration denounced as wrong a May 9 Newsweek article that stated U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo had flushed a Koran down a toilet to try to make detainees talk. The magazine retracted the article, which had triggered protests in Afghanistan in which 16 people died. The newly released document, dated Aug. 1, 2002, contained a summary of statements made days earlier by a detainee, whose name was redacted, in two interviews with an FBI special agent, whose name also was withheld, at the Guantanamo prison for foreign terrorism suspects. The American Civil Liberties Union released the memo and a series of other FBI documents it obtained from the government under court order through the Freedom of Information Act. "Personally, he has nothing against the United States. The guards in the detention facility do not treat him well. Their behavior is bad. About five months ago, the guards beat the detainees. They flushed a Koran in the toilet," the FBI agent wrote. "The guards dance around when the detainees are trying to pray. The guards still do these things," the FBI agent wrote. The Pentagon stated last week it had received "no credible and specific allegations" that U.S. personnel at Guantanamo had put a Koran in the toilet. The documents indicated that detainees were making allegations that they had been abused and that the Muslim holy book had been mishandled as early as April 2002, about three months after the first detainees arrived at Guantanamo. In other documents, FBI agents stated that Guantanamo detainees also accused U.S. personnel of kicking the Koran and throwing it to the floor, and described beatings by guards. But one document cited a detainee who accused a guard of dropping a Koran, prompting an "uprising" by prisoners, when it was the prisoner himself who dropped it.
----------- Guantanamo Detainees Had Alleged Koran Desecration Government documents reveal perceived abuses.
By Richard B. Schmitt, LA Times Staff Writer 2:18 PM PDT, May 25, 2005
WASHINGTON -- FBI interviews at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in 2002 and 2003 reflected allegations by detainees that guards desecrated the Koran on numerous occasions, and that perceived abuses of the Muslim holy book triggered unrest and even a possible dissolution attempt, newly released government documents revealed today. The allegations include an incident in which guards "flushed a Koran in the toilet" and used the Koran as a weapon to gain the cooperation of detainees, the documents show. In another incident, a detainee refused to cooperate with investigators because of an alleged incident involving an interrogator "humiliating the Koran" during the interrogation of another inmate. The documents Ñ the latest to be released as part of a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union seeking to shed light on the U.S. treatment of prisoners in Cuba Ñ parallel allegations of Koran abuse by detainees in civil lawsuits against U.S. authorities and in interviews with The Times and other news organizations. ACLU officials said the documents showed that U.S. officials failed to take seriously allegations that guards were desecrating the Koran when they surfaced. "The United States government's own documents show that it has known of numerous allegations of Koran desecration for a significant period of time," said Amrit Singh, an attorney with the ACLU. Singh said the disclosures raised questions "regarding the extent to which such desecration was authorized by high-ranking U.S. officials in the first place." The issue of Koran abuse flared this month after Newsweek magazine reported that U.S. investigators had confirmed an incident in which a Koran was flushed down a toilet at the prison, and that the incident was going to be included in an upcoming Pentagon report. The article Ñ which Newsweek subsequently retracted Ñ contributed to deadly rioting in the Muslim world....
