Qu'ran report could be blunder

2005-05-15 21:18

Washington - The US magazine whose story of alleged desecration of a Qu'ran holy book sparked deadly protests in Muslim countries, said on Sunday that its report might have been wrong.

Newsweek said the US defence department had angrily protested that the story was wrong and its editor Mark Whitaker said in an editorial "we regret that we got any part of our story wrong and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the US soldiers caught in its midst."

Demonstrations in Afghanistan over the past week have left at least 14 dead and 120 injured. There have also been anti-US rallies in other countries.

Several Muslim governments have also expressed concern and called for a full investigation which has been promised by the US administration. The US military said it has found no evidence yet to back the claims.

Newsweek reported on May 9 that an upcoming inquiry report by the US military would reveal that investigators had found that interrogators at the US "war on terror" detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba had flushed a Qu'ran down a toilet.

In its new account in this week's magazine, Newsweek said that on checking with the senior US official who had remembered seeing details of the Qu'ran incident in a report, the official could no longer be sure.

Newsweek said that when it told Pentagon spokesperson Lawrence DiRita of the source's response, DiRita "exploded".

"People are dead because of what this son of a bitch said. How could he be credible now?" DiRita was quoted as saying.

The magazine has not been the first to allege abuse of the Qu'ran at Guantanamo, where about 540 'war on terror' detainees are held.

" Although other major news organisations had air charges of Qu'ran desecration based only on the testimony of detainees, we believed our story was newsworthy because a US official said government investigators turned up this evidence," said the magazine editor in his editorial.

"Top administration officials have promised to continue looking into the charges, and so will we," Whitaker said before expressing Newsweek's regrets.

And the latest account quoted Mark Falkoff, a lawyer for some Guantanamo inmates, as saying that a suicide attempt by 23 detainees in August, 2003 was triggered by guard dropping and stamping on a Qu'ran.

The US authorities have not outright denied there have incidents involving the Qu'ran. General Richard Myers, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last week that no evidence had been found yet to back the allegations.

But in the face of the widespread protests in other countries, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice last week decried the desecration of any holy text as "abhorrent" and promised that any offenders at Guantanamo would face "appropriate action".

The United States has been struggling to rebuild its image in the Muslim after divisions caused by the 2003 invasion of Iraq and outrage over the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal.

Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai on Saturday blamed those opposing his country's alliance with the United States for the Qu'ran protests - Afghanistan's worst unrest since the Taliban militia was ousted in late 2001.

He said the originally peaceful protests had been exploited by the "enemies of peace" to undermine parliamentary elections and plans to reconcile with Taliban remnants.

- AFP