FBI memo reports Guantanamo guards flushing Koran

2 hours, 13 minutes ago

An FBI agent wrote in a 2002 document made public on Wednesday that a detainee held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had accused American jailers there of flushing the Koran down a toilet.

The release of the declassified document came the week after the Bush administration denounced as wrong a May 9 Newsweek article that stated U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo had flushed a Koran down a toilet to try to make detainees talk.

The magazine retracted the article, which had triggered protests in Afghanistan in which 16 people died.

The newly released document, dated Aug. 1, 2002, contained a summary of statements made days earlier by a detainee, whose name was redacted, in two interviews with an FBI special agent, whose name also was withheld, at the Guantanamo prison for foreign terrorism suspects.

The American Civil Liberties Union released the memo and a series of other FBI documents it obtained from the government under court order through the Freedom of Information Act.

"Personally, he has nothing against the United States. The guards in the detention facility do not treat him well. Their behavior is bad. About five months ago, the guards beat the detainees. They flushed a Koran in the toilet," the FBI agent wrote.

"The guards dance around when the detainees are trying to pray. The guards still do these things," the FBI agent wrote.

The Pentagon stated last week it had received "no credible and specific allegations" that U.S. personnel at Guantanamo had put a Koran in the toilet.

The documents indicated that detainees were making allegations that they had been abused and that the Muslim holy book had been mishandled as early as April 2002, about three months after the first detainees arrived at Guantanamo.

In other documents, FBI agents stated that Guantanamo detainees also accused U.S. personnel of kicking the Koran and throwing it to the floor, and described beatings by guards. But one document cited a detainee who accused a guard of dropping a Koran, prompting an "uprising" by prisoners, when it was the prisoner himself who dropped it.

The Pentagon had no immediate comment on the documents.

The United States currently holds about 520 detainees at Guantanamo, a high-security prison it opened in January 2002 for non-U.S. citizens caught in the U.S. war on terrorism.

Former detainees and a lawyer for current prisoners previously have stated that U.S. personnel at Guantanamo had placed the Koran in a toilet, but the Pentagon last week said it did not view those allegations as credible.

'MORE CREDIBLE'

"Unfortunately, one thing we've learned over the last couple of years is that detainee statements about their treatment at Guantanamo and other detention centers sometimes have turned out to be more credible than U.S. government statements," said ACLU lawyer Jameel Jaffer.

Jaffer said the latest documents show the U.S. government had heard detainees complain as early as 2002 about desecration of the Koran at Guantanamo Bay, including at least one mentioning it had been placed in a toilet.

In another document, written in April 2003, an FBI agent related a detainee's account of an incident involving a female U.S. interrogator.

"While the guards held him, she removed her blouse, embraced the detainee from behind and put her hand on his genitals. The interrogator was on her menstrual period and she wiped blood from her body on his face and head," the memo stated.

A similar incident was described in a recent book written by a former Guantanamo interrogator.

The U.S. military launched an inquiry after the Newsweek article was published into whether Guantanamo personnel placed the Koran in a toilet, but the review was limited to searching through official day-to-day log entries.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan last week said Newsweek "got the facts wrong." Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman last week called the article "demonstrably false."

From Reuters.

Ziggy, does it also bother you that Saudi Arabia has a policy that confiscates, shreds, destroys any Bibles they find on free citizens? Or tourists? Should we also consider this a hate crime against our holy book by Islam?

As to all your links and references, I hold them very lightly, as Islamic documents have been brought to light clearly stating their strategy: to falsely accuse their captors of any and every type of abuse. Just because these allegations have been written by the FBI does not make them credible; they are simply investigating an allegation and false accusations are a big part of their m.o.

Notice these are all summaries or statements made by "detainees". These detainees are in prison for being suspected terrorists, so their word carries no weight at all with me; these are the people who kill innocent women and children, chop off heads, etc.

I agree about Saudi Arabia--Bush should sever his personal ties with the Saud family and an independent investigation should immediately be launched into funding of Al Qaeda by that family, any knowledge of such funding on the part of Bush, and any business connections between the Saud and Bush families.

As for the detainees in Guantanamo, you are assuming they are guilty, even though they have not had a trial, and charges and evidence against them have not been made public. How do you know they are guilty? And even if they were guilty, how would you know what they are saying about their treatment is false?

Moreover, the anonymous source Newsweek cited mentioned a government report that specified this incident with the Koran. Newsweek retracted the story when that source conceded that he could not be sure the report he mentioned specified this incident, and could not remember which report he had seen. Perhaps this FBI report was the government report he had in mind. If so, Newsweek was wrongly bullied into retracting the story by the administration.

The detainees are suspected terrorists. These people are instructed to use false allegations.

Historically, anonymous sources were never credible in journalism. Unfortunately, the MSM has sunk to new lows on this--they are more on the par of rags like the Enquirer now. Dan Rather's 'fake but accurate' report on Bush's military record, and Newsweek's anonymous toilet sources inciting the deaths of over 49 people. Yeah, that's impressive.

P.S. Ziggy, nice to have you back :)

and you should also point out that...we are having a hard time finding out just who, exactly, died in these riots.

also, it would be nice to find out if there are any...you know...facts in this here story what magically showed up since 2002.

I gotta go along with the Fake but Accurate line here. if, in fact, the French-patrolled country of Afghanistan has actually HAD any real deaths.

hmm. look at this:

>>>> "We've gone back to the detainee who allegedly made the allegation and he has said it didn't happen. So the underlying allegation, the detainee himself, within the last two weeks, said that didn't happen," chief Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita told a briefing."

Source: http://story.news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050526/us_nm/security_guantanamo_koran_dc_6

What I find disturbing about both Rathergate and the Newsweek story is that the administration is using inaccuracies or ambiguity in documentation to censor entire historical occurrences. Whether Bush received preferential treatment in the military or whether interrogators at Guantanamo flushed a Koran down a toilet remain open empirical questions whether or not there have been mistakes in reporting on them.

Dee do you know for a fact that the detainee who reported seeing a Koran flushed down a toilet to the FBI was instructed to make it up?

Sorry I don't have the techno savvy to link, but check out Littlegreenfootballs and they've got the link there about training, teaching detainees to lie about abuse, etc.

Ziggy, explain how the admin is censoring anything. The WH does not have the authority to censor, and judging from the stories from the MSM, they're on a roll reporting whatever they want without documenation, facts, etc. Just anonymous sources. That reeks. Believe me I would be just as suspect if this were a democratic WH and stories like this "appeared". If we can't have honest and truthful dialogue and debate real facts, then our culture is going down the toilet, nevermind the koran.

P.S. If a newspaper is sure their source is right-on accurate, NOBODY can bully them into retraction. The only thing reporters care about is getting the scoup and the Pulizter.