Washington – U.S. officials have substantiated five cases in which military guards or interrogators mishandled the Koran of Muslim prisoners at Guantanamo Bay but found “no credible evidence” to confirm a prisoner’s report that a holy book was flushed in a toilet, the prison’s commander said Thursday.
Brig. Gen. Jay W. Hood, who commands the detention center in Cuba, told a Pentagon news conference that a prisoner who was reported to have complained to an FBI agent in 2002 that a military guard threw a Koran in the toilet has told Hood’s investigators that he never witnessed any form of Koran desecration.
The unidentified prisoner, questioned at Guantanamo on May 14, said he had heard talk of guards mishandling religious articles but did not witness any such acts, Hood said.
The general said he could not speculate on why the prisoner had recanted his earlier statement, which was contained in an Aug. 1, 2002, summary of an FBI agent’s July 22, 2002, interrogation of the prisoner.
“I’d like you to know that we have found no credible evidence that a member of the Joint Task Force at Guantanamo Bay ever flushed a Koran down a toilet,” Hood said. “We did identify 13 incidents of alleged mishandling of the Koran by Joint Task Force personnel. Ten of those were by a guard and three by interrogators.”
Of the 13 alleged incidents, five were substantiated, he said.
Four were by guards and one was by an interrogator. Hood said the five cases “could be broadly defined as mishandling” of the holy book, but he refused to discuss details. In three of the five cases, the mishandling appears to have been deliberate. In the two others, it apparently was accidental.
