Friday, May 27, 2005
Pentagon: We Didn't Flush The Qur'an
Jax
The Pentagon admitted last night that it had uncovered five instances of mishandling of the Qur'an at Guantánamo Bay, but it claimed that there was "no credible evidence" that a copy had ever been flushed down the toilet.
Brigadier General Jay Hood, commander of the US prison in Cuba, said an investigation had uncovered 13 separate allegations that the Qur'an had been mishandled, 10 by prison guards and three by interrogators.
Presenting what the Pentagon described as an interim report into alleged mistreatment of the holy book at the base, he said that in only five of those 13 instances - four of which were by guards and one by an interrogator - was there anything that could be broadly defined as mishandling of a Qur'an.
The investigation follows publication of allegations about the toilet incident in Newsweek magazine that was blamed for rioting in Afghanistan during which 16 people died. The magazine published a retraction, but went on to detail further allegations of desecration of the Qur'an by US military interrogators.
Brig Gen Hood said that in three of the five instances the mishandling appeared to have been deliberate, but refused to elaborate other than to say that none of the incidents was a result of a failure to follow standard operating procedures.
But he was emphatic that a prisoner who reportedly complained to an FBI agent in 2002 that a military guard threw a Qur'an in the toilet has now told investigators that he never witnessed any form of Qur'an desecration.
Following his complaint to the FBI agent, the unidentified prisoner was questioned by Pentagon officials and said only that he had heard talk of guards mishandling religious articles, but did not witness any such acts, according to Brig Gen Hood.
"I'd like you to know that we have found no credible evidence that a member of the joint task force at Guantánamo Bay ever flushed a Qur'an down a toilet," he said. (Link)
