Pentagon Details Five Desecrations of Qur'an

WASHINGTON, June 4, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – The US military detailed on Friday, June 3, five cases in which jailers at the US prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had desecrated copies of the Noble Qur’an, including one incident which occurred as recent as March.

US South Command, responsible for the notorious prison at the US naval base, detailed in a statement for the first time how the Muslim divine book was splashed by a guard’s urine, kicked, stepped on and soaked in water, Reuters news agency reported.

The statement followed the completion of a military inquiry launched after a May 9 Newsweek article, quoting a knowledgeable US government source, said US interrogators at Guantanamo had flushed a copy of the Qur’an down a toilet to try to "soften" the detainees.

After harsh criticism from the Pentagon, the weekly cast some doubts on the story in its May 23 edition, saying the source “couldn't be certain about reading of the alleged Qur'an incident in the report we cited, and said it might have been in other investigative documents or drafts”.

The report sparked angry and violent protests across the Muslim world from Afghanistan, where 16 were killed and more than 100 injured, to Gaza City.

Five Cases

Brig. Gen. Jay Hood, commander of the Guantanamo prison who headed the inquiry, said the inquiry has confirmed five cases of desecration.

In the incident involving urine, which took place this past March, the statement said that a guard left his observation post, went outside and urinated near an air vent, and “the wind blew his urine through the vent” and into a cell block.

It said a detainee told guards the urine “splashed on him and his Qur’an.”

The statement said the detainee was given a new prison uniform and Qur’an, and that the guard was reprimanded and given duty in which he had no contact with prisoners.

Army Capt. John Adams, a spokesman at Guantanamo, said the inquiry deemed the incident “accidental.”

South Command also said a civilian contractor interrogator apologized in July 2003 to a detainee for stepping on his Qur’an.

The interrogator “was later terminated for a pattern of unacceptable behavior, an inability to follow direct guidance and poor leadership,” the statement said.

In August 2003, prisoners' copies of the Qur’an became wet when night-shift guards threw water balloons in a cell block, the statement said.

In the fourth desecrating incident, South Command said a prisoner in August 2003 complained that a “two-word obscenity” had been written in English in his Qur’an.

South Command said it was “possible” a guard had written the words but “equally possible” the prisoner himself had done it. It did not offer an explanation of the detainee's possible motive.

In February 2002, guards kicked a prisoner's Qur’an, it added.

In the statement, Hood reiterated that the inquiry found “no credible evidence” that a guard ever flushed a Qur’an down a toilet, stating that “the matter is considered closed.”

Hood further said there were four additional incidents of “alleged mishandling” of the Qur’an that “we cannot determine conclusively if they actually happened.”

These involved prisoners' complaints that jailers kicked and put a foot on the Qur’an, threw it into a bag of wet towels, and told a detainee the book “belonged in the toilet.”

The United States holds about 520 detainees at Guantanamo, most caught in Afghanistan, and has classified them as “enemy combatants” not entitled to rights given to prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions.

The high-security prison opened in January 2002 for non-US citizens caught in the US-led war on terrorism, and many prisoners have been held more than three years without charges.

Human Rights Watchdog blasted last week the prison as the “gulag of our times,” challenging Washington to open the military detention center to outside inspections.

The group further said in a 25 May report that human rights were in retreat worldwide because of Washington's war on terror which gave other countries an excuse to roll back the rule of law.