Home > FBI Memo Reports Guantanamo Guards Flushing Koran

FBI Memo Reports Guantanamo Guards Flushing Koran

by Open-Publishing - Thursday 26 May 2005
5 comments

Wars and conflicts International Prison Religions-Beliefs USA

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsA...

FBI Memo Reports Guantanamo Guards Flushing Koran
Wed May 25, 2005

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 declassified 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.

The Pentagon had no immediate comment on the documents.

The United States currently holds about 520 detainees at Guantanamo, a high-security prison it opened in January 2002 for non-U.S. citizens caught in the U.S. war on terrorism.

Former detainees and a lawyer for current prisoners previously have stated that U.S. personnel at Guantanamo had placed the Koran in a toilet, but the Pentagon last week said it did not view those allegations as credible.

"MORE CREDIBLE"

"Unfortunately, one thing we’ve learned over the last couple of years is that detainee statements about their treatment at Guantanamo and other detention centers sometimes have turned out to be more credible than U.S. government statements," said ACLU lawyer Jameel Jaffer.

Jaffer said the latest documents show the U.S. government had heard detainees complain as early as 2002 about desecration of the Koran at Guantanamo Bay, including at least one mentioning it had been placed in a toilet.

In another document, written in April 2003, an FBI agent related a detainee’s account of an incident involving a female U.S. interrogator.

"While the guards held him, she removed her blouse, embraced the detainee from behind and put her hand on his genitals. The interrogator was on her menstrual period and she wiped blood from her body on his face and head," the memo stated.

A similar incident was described in a recent book written by a former Guantanamo interrogator.

The U.S. military launched an inquiry after the Newsweek article was published into whether Guantanamo personnel placed the Koran in a toilet, but the review was limited to searching through official day-to-day log entries.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan last week said Newsweek "got the facts wrong." Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman last week called the article "demonstrably false."

Forum posts

  • So what if they flushed a Koran down the toilet? The taliban eviscerated the Buddhist statues. Why should we respect islamic religious items if muslims can’t/won’t reciprocate?

    • Why was it ’leaked’ ? The US government is trying to inflame the Muslim world, and would welcome a bit of 9/11 type retaliation in order to justify their middle east slaughter and further imperialistic adventures.

      Some kind of ’terrorist’ action is imminent, whether fabricated or genuine, and the ’trail’ might just lead to Tehran.

    • Why? Because the rest of the time you would go on and on endlessly about being better than them. The fact that you spend your entire life looking for the lowest common denominator instead of striving to lead by any sort of example makes you dangerous and ignorant.

    • Recently the army had on it’s website a picture of an army tank with the words "New Testament" written on the gun barrel affirming to all personnel the fact that the United States military considers the Iraq war to be a religious war, this fact has been ignored by the press but is being taught to the U.S. troops in and out of Iraq. It is not hard to believe that the Qu’ran has been desecrated in furtherance of the administration’s message to Islam that this is a struggle of who’s God will rule.

      The disturbing thing is that our government has to lie as it’s official policy about what it has and is doing. I used to think that the U.S.A. was an honorable country that conducted policy by proudly doing the right thing. But clearly it has adopted a new way of doing things. It seems that they are doing any disgusting thing then they have to lie about it because they know it is wrong. All of the rethoric is about how we are in Iraq to bring our "values" to a supressed people. Are these values now based on lying and not even acceptable behavior based on what will pass the test of public scrutiny by our government that is supposed to be "for the people". If the people of this country would not approve of what our government is doing (with the exception of fanatical "Christians") then are we to assume that the government no longer cares about the American people’s values?

      The desecration of the Qu’ran by the military is obviously a way to inflame Muslims to fight back in what is apparently a crusade for the Christian doctrine. Next to calling you mother an ugly whore, flushing the Bible down the toilet would bring about strong emotional reactions from any American citizen to the point of hatred and retaliation, which is obviously the point.

      Since George W. Bush has taken the office of presidency, it seems that lying is the new official policy along with torture. But does this behavior speak well for the American people?

    • Lead by any sort of example? Who says they want to be lead? You have obviously been dhimminished.