Washington – The Pentagon on Friday released new details about mishandling of the Koran at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prison for suspected terrorists, confirming that a soldier deliberately kicked the Muslim holy book.
The Pentagon also confirmed that an interrogator stepped on a Koran and was later fired for “a pattern of unacceptable behavior.”
In other confirmed incidents, a guard’s urine came through an air vent and splashed on a detainee and his Koran; water balloons thrown by prison guards caused an unspecified number of Korans to get wet; and in a confirmed but ambiguous case, a two-word obscenity was written in English on the inside cover of a Koran.
The findings, released after normal business hours Friday evening, are among the results of an investigation last month by Brig. Gen. Jay Hood, the commander of the detention center in Cuba. The investigation was triggered by a Newsweek magazine report – later retracted – that a U.S. soldier had flushed one Guantanamo Bay detainee’s Koran down a toilet.
The story stirred worldwide controversy, and the Bush administration blamed it for deadly demonstrations in Afghanistan.
Hood said in a written statement released Friday evening, along with the new details, that his investigation “revealed a consistent, documented policy of respectful handling of the Koran dating back almost 2 1/2 years.”
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. He could not determine conclusively whether the four others took place.
In one of those four unconfirmed cases, a detainee in April 2003 complained to FBI and other interrogators that guards “constantly defile the Koran.”
The detainee alleged that in one instance a female military guard threw a Koran into a bag of wet towels to anger another detainee, and he also alleged that another guard said the Koran 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 Koran mishandling.
The detainee has since been released.
