'Urine splashed on Qu'ran'
2005-06-04 08:17
Robert Burns
Washington - The Pentagon released new details about mishandling of the Qu'ran at the Guantanamo Bay prison for terror suspects, confirming that a soldier deliberately kicked the Muslim holy book and that an interrogator stepped on a Qu'ran and was later fired for "a pattern of unacceptable behaviour."
In other confirmed incidents, a guard's urine came through an air vent and splashed on a detainee and his Qu'ran; water balloons thrown by prison guards caused an unspecified number of Qu'rans to get wet; and in a confirmed but ambiguous case, a two-word obscenity was written in English on the inside cover of a Qu'ran.
The findings are among the results of an investigation last month by Brigadier General Jay Hood, the commander of the detention centre in Cuba, that was triggered by a Newsweek magazine report - later retracted - that a United States soldier had flushed one Guantanamo Bay detainee's Qu'ran down a toilet.
Confirmed reports
The story stirred worldwide controversy and the Bush administration blamed it for deadly demonstrations in Afghanistan.
Hood said in a written statement released on Friday evening, along with the new details, that his investigation "revealed a consistent, documented policy of respectful handling of the Qu'ran"
Hood said that of nine mishandling cases that were studied in detail by reviewing thousands of pages of written records, five were confirmed to have happened.
In one of those four unconfirmed cases, a detainee in April 2003 complained to FBI and other interrogators that guards "constantly defile the Qu'ran." The detainee alleged that in one instance a female military guard threw a Qu'ran into a bag of wet towels to anger another detainee, and he also alleged that another guard said the Quran belonged in the toilet and that guards were ordered to do these things.
Hood said he found no other record of this detainee mentioning any Qu'ran mishandling. The detainee has since been released.
In the most recent confirmed case, Hood said a detainee complained on March 25, 2005, of urine splashing on him and his Qu'ran. An unidentified guard admitted at the time that "he was at fault," the Hood report said, although it did not say whether the act was deliberate. The guard's supervisor reprimanded him and assigned him to gate guard duty, where he had no contact with detainees for the remainder of his assignment at Guantanamo Bay.
As described in the Hood report, the guard had left his observation post and went outside to urinate. He urinated near an air vent and the wind blew his urine through the vent into the cell block.
Hood also said his investigation found 15 cases of detainees mishandling their own Qu'rans. "These included using a Qu'ran as a pillow, ripping pages out of the Qu'ran, attempting to flush a Qu'ran down the toilet and urinating on the Qu'ran," Hood's report said.
There are about 540 detainees at Guantanamo Bay.
- AP