Home > Newsweek report on Quran matches many earlier accounts

Newsweek report on Quran matches many earlier accounts

by Open-Publishing - Monday 16 May 2005
17 comments

Newspapers-mags Wars and conflicts International Prison Religions-Beliefs USA

RAW STORY

Contrary to White House assertions, the allegations of religious desecration at Guantanamo published by Newsweek May 6 are common among ex-prisoners and have been widely reported outside the United States, RAW STORY has learned.

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Several former detainees at the Guantanamo and Bagram airbase prisons have reported instances of their handlers sitting or standing on the Quran, throwing or kicking it in toilets, and urinating on it.

Where the Newsweek report likely erred was in saying that the U.S. was slated to acknowledge desecrating the Quran in internal investigations, and in relying on a single anonymous source to make grave allegations. But reports of desecration are manifold.

One such incident-during which the Koran allegedly was thrown in a pile and stepped on-prompted a hunger strike among Guantanamo detainees in Mar. 2002, which led to an apology. The New York Times interviewed former detainee Nasser Nijer Naser al-Mutairi May 1, who said the protest ended with a senior officer delivering an apology to the entire camp.

"A former interrogator at Guantanamo, in an interview with the Times, confirmed the accounts of the hunger strikes, including the public expression of regret over the treatment of the Korans," Times reporters Neil A. Lewis and Eric Schmitt wrote in "Inquiry Finds Abuses at Guantanamo Bay."

The hunger strike and apology story was also confirmed by another former detainee, Shafiq Rasul, interviewed by the UK Guardian in 2003 (James Meek, "The people the law forgot," Guardian, Dec. 3, 2003) It was also confirmed by former prisoner Jamal al-Harith in an interview with the Daily Mirror (Rosa Prince and Gary Jones, "My Hell in Camp X-ray World Exclusive," Daily Mirror, Mar. 12, 2004).

The toilet incident was reported in the Washington Post in a 2003 interview with a former detainee from Afghanistan:

"Ehsannullah, 29, said American soldiers who initially questioned him in Kandahar before shipping him to Guantanamo hit him and taunted him by dumping the Koran in a toilet. ‘It was a very bad situation for us,’ said Ehsannullah, who comes from the home region of the Taliban leader, Mohammad Omar. ‘We cried so much and shouted, Please do not do that to the Holy Koran.’ (Marc Kaufman and April Witt, "Out of Legal Limbo, Some Tell of Mistreatment," Washington Post, Mar. 26, 2003.)

Also citing the toilet incident is testimony by Asif Iqbal, a former Guatanamo detainee who was released to British custody in Mar. 2004 and subsequently freed without charge:

"The behaviour of the guards towards our religious practices as well as the Koran was also, in my view, designed to cause us as much distress as possible. They would kick the Koran, throw it into the toilet and generally disrespect it." (Center for Constitution Rights, Detention in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, (Aug. 4, 2004, deposition available here.)

The claim that US troops at Bagram airbase prison in Afghanistan urinated on the Koran was made by former detainee Mohamed Mazouz, a Moroccan, as reported in the Moroccan newspaper, La Gazette du Maroc. (Abdelhak Najib, "Les Américains pissaient sur le Coran et abusaient de nous sexuellement", Apr. 11, 2005). An English translation is available on the Cage Prisoners web site (which describes itself as a "non-sectarian Islamic human rights website"): http://www.cageprisoners.com/print.php?id=6862

Tarek Derghoul, another of the British detainees, similarly cites instances of Koran desecration in an interview with Cageprisoners.com, available at: http://www.cageprisoners.com/articles.php?id=1611

Desecration of the Koran was also mentioned by former Guantanamo detainee Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost and reported by the BBC in early May 2005. (Haroon Rashid, "Ex-inmates share Guantanamo ordeal," May 2, 2005).

http://rawstory.com/exclusives/newsweek_koran_report_516.htm

Forum posts

  • The data and historical reference are there
    the story by news week was not retracted, although the white house has demanded it.

    too late,

  • Everyone knows that those detainees are liars and love to fan anti-american hatred. It’s easy to do and costs them nothing.

    • Except their time on their sin
      Of never being charged
      in three years
      of their lives

      where is your life three years ago or now?

  • For your information, Newsweek has now officially WITHDRAWN the story. Meanwhile, 16 people are dead, countless others injured in riots, and not a single goddamn bloody one of you lefties has the guts to say, Yeah, that was WRONG to publish a bogus story. Such is your hatred both for the United States of America, and for the President of the United States. Not to even speak of the damage this FALSE story has done to the image that we are trying to promote, which is that we are trying to convince the Muslim world that we are not against them.

    Newsweek must be BANNED from covering the Iraq war, they must be forced to withdraw their reporters from Iraq, they must not participate in any Pentagon briefings, and if charges can be brought against them, Alberto Gonzalez better be looking into it, or he’s guilty of dereliction of duty.

    Those scumbag prisoners at Guantanamo of course have a motive to speak badly about their incarceration. How can they prove what they say?

    • Nah, smells like Bush and Co. are likely just trying to cover their arses by trying to make Newsweek take responsibility for what their own goons are doing.

    • My proof is not from
      Newspeak

      But from many years of this truth.

      Of course truth is an option now,
      or evidence is not a reality you must follow
      for it is belief,
      in the natural world ,
      and not your observations that form your reality
      evidence is only
      a science to your own
      opinion of logic
      which does not go or follow
      the history of intellect or logic..

    • Wow 16 people are dead and an American has come over all indignant about it...... HELLO??????
      What about the thousands of Iraqis killed because your pres wants to get a bit richer? What about the soldiers you’ve lost through his lies. This is a blatant attempt to subdue a media that is already no more than a ten cent whore.

    • All the things you’ve said about Bush can equally apply to Saddam so what’s your point? You’re probably used to your media and "news" outlets where they do lie and distort events on a regular basis. I still expect my news media to report news responsibly. Having said that, I don’t think Newsweek should take full responsibility for the deaths although they contributed to the cause. Newsweek isn’t used to excitable muslims. They are used to non-muslims who are rational and don’t believe everything they read. And even if they do believe everything they read, non-muslims on the whole don’t go around rioting just because someone said something that denigrates their religion; they are more tolerant.

    • "Excitable Muslims"? What are you on? That’s like suggesting that all Americans are assholes. Some are, some aren’t. You cannot go around ascribing your own pathetic prejudices to entire race or religious groups. Unfortunately it’s a typical trait of certain US citizens and follows in the awful footsteps of "all native Americans are savages" and "all black Americans are criminals". It is doltish and stupid and it takes absolutely no account of the thousands of facts that prove it to be so.

  • Newsweek knows exactly what it is doing. The editors are very educated people who understand the region they are dealing with. There is no question about it: the bulk of the press in the USA is LIBERAL, Pro-DEMOCRAT, despises President Bush, despises the war in Iraq, and would love to have the US military fail miserably in Iraq. If that brings down the entire edifice, so be it. That’s their attitude.

    I am totally mystified by you people who say our press is pandering to the President. I believe they exaggerate a story’s dimensions, and misinterpret it’s significance — as long as it makes the USA look bad. That’s the standard.

    So far, we’ve had Komrade Dan Rather resign, along with her ultra-liberal activist producer, masquerading as a "balanced" news producer Mary Mapes (they both just got awards last night, what a joke), then the New York Times got into trouble because one of their journalists refuse to divulge sources (OK, go to jail, that’s all, what’ the problema??), and now Newsweek. It seems the whole liberal establishment is coming apart at the seams because their hatred cannot be contained any longer, and the public no longer trusts them anyway. We’re all watching CABLE news, primarily FOX, and internet blogs. Dan Rather is a dinosaur, and when he’s gone, it’s Extinction! It was never this bad, even when Bill Clinton was in office, and they were going after him.

    YOu say Bush getting rich, HOW, for crying out loud? Don’t you see the oil production is no where yet? The insurgents keep bombing and destroying pipelines, no one can get any headway.

    • I just love idiots, how they rant and rave, never making any logic or any sound argument: just what comes from the pulpet of FOX news.

    • Let’s not horseshit eachother, we know what has happened during "interrogations" by the military, what would make anyone think that this did NOT happen? Remember the entire senate and house going into closed door sessions to view the pictures and videos about the abu garib rapes and sodomys involving our military against women and children prisoners? Did you all forget so soon? Remember they wouldn’t allow American citizens to see what they had seen because they didn’t want us to see how depraved our military was? Remember, come on guys, you can’t have forgotten THAT so soon....you weren’t outraged then when they sodomized the little Arab boys and raped the little Arab girls, but you think this thing with a "holy" book just couldn’t have happened....ya, right.

    • Ever hear of Halliburton, Kellogg Brown and Root, Carlyle, etc., etc., not to mention the kick backs form the arms manufacturers....get a brain.

    • The fact that they’re not getting all the oil they wanted yet is because they couldn’t organise a drinks party in a brewery.
      Like everything else they’ve done in relation to Iraq, they cocked it up. They are a clueless bunch of know nothing morons. They dismantled the army (mistake) they dismantled social provision (mistake) they failed to offer any protection to anyone (mistake) and they lied to get you there in the first place (smart move - as you’re all to dumb to realise.)

  • How can one erroneous new article result in murderous riots? When Palestinian forces occupied the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, they ripped up the Bible for use as toilet paper, smoked, and used the altar for cooking. Christians of every stripe, throughout the world, regard this as a sacrilege in one of Christendom’s holiest sites, yet nobody rioted, much less killed anybody. What’s Islam’s problem?

    • That’s just it it was not erroneous. The truth always gets the Republipukes in so much trouble, that is why they never tell it. And it makes them so mad when anyone else does.

    • First of all it is not an erroneous article. This story has been doing the rounds for months. The simple fact appears to be that the Bush media machine is pressuring any news organisation that dares to report the truth in any way. The Dan Rather thing was much the same. Rather was fed the right story, with the wrong documents. That way the documents could be trashed (the fact that the story was absolutely true didn’t seem to matter) and another nail forced into the coffin of a media that has already played dead for years.
      Islam’s problem is cultural (actually it isn’t a problem it’s just a difference) in that the Holy Koran is regarded as of specific importance in the way that the Bible is not - ie, where Christians value the contents in a spiritual way, Muslims regard the word itself as sacred and not just the meaning.
      Although I have to admit a certain scepticism as to whether the Palestinian story is true or merely apocryphal. However, if you can point me to an authoritative source for the story I will happily accept its provenance.
      If Christians regarded the word as sacred rather than the loose interpretations that are placed upon those words then the war in Iraq wouldn’t have happened and adulterers across the western world would be suffering death by stoning as we speak.