|
Washington Post - May 26, 2005
Inmates Alleged Koran Abuse:
FBI Papers Cite Complaints as Early as 2002
By Dan Eggen and Josh White
Detainees told FBI interrogators as early as April 2002 that mistreatment of the Koran was widespread at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and many said they were severely beaten by captors there or in Afghanistan, according to FBI documents released yesterday.
The summaries of FBI interviews, obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union as part of an ongoing lawsuit, include a dozen allegations that the Koran was kicked, thrown to the floor or withheld as punishment. One prisoner said in August 2002 that guards had "flushed a Koran in the toilet" and had beaten some detainees.
But the Pentagon said yesterday that the same prisoner, who is still in custody, was reinterviewed on May 14 and "did not corroborate" his earlier claim about the Koran. "We still have found no credible allegations that a Koran was flushed down a toilet at Guantanamo," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said in a statement last night.
The newly declassified accounts, written primarily in 2002 and 2003, were released in the aftermath of an international uproar over a now-retracted story by Newsweek magazine, which reported that an internal military investigation had confirmed that a Koran was flushed down a toilet. Some administration officials have blamed the story for sparking riots overseas that left 16 people dead.
The disclosures came on the same day that Amnesty International released a report calling Guantanamo Bay "the gulag of our time" and labeling the United States "a leading purveyor and practitioner" of torture and mistreatment of prisoners. Amnesty and the Constitution Project, a legal advocacy group, made separate demands yesterday for an independent investigation into allegations of detainee abuse at U.S. facilities.
While detainees and others have lodged complaints of abuse at Guantanamo Bay, this is only the second major release of internal FBI memos on the subject. The accounts released yesterday by the ACLU consist of summaries of FBI interrogations of Guantanamo Bay detainees and therefore do not provide corroboration of the allegations.
Some captives said they witnessed mistreatment of the Koran. Three told FBI interrogators that they had only heard about incidents from other inmates, the records show.
Yet the interviews underscore that U.S. government officials were made aware of allegations of prisoner abuse and Koran mistreatment within months of the opening of Guantanamo Bay in early 2002, and echo allegations made by the International Committee of the Red Cross and a Muslim chaplain, as well as the detainees and their attorneys…..
About a dozen of the FBI interviews included allegations that guards or interrogators at Guantanamo Bay either mishandled the Koran to outrage prisoners or engaged in religiously offensive behavior that included, in one instance, throwing a prisoner's prayer cap in the trash.
The records also include numerous allegations that guards or interrogators at Guantanamo Bay used sexually suggestive techniques designed to humiliate Muslim men. One said he was forced to stand naked in front of a female interrogator. Another said he was "touched sexually" by male guards.
The FBI records also include at least 19 separate allegations of beatings or other severe violence on the part of guards or others in control of the prisoners in Afghanistan or at Guantanamo Bay. One captive said he was kicked in the stomach, back and head by U.S. military personnel at an unknown location and suffered a broken shoulder.
"The evidence that there was systemic and widespread abuse of detainees in U.S. custody continues to mount and the government continues to turn a blind eye to this evidence," said Amrit Singh, an ACLU lawyer.
In releasing its annual report on human rights yesterday, Amnesty International called for an independent investigation into alleged abuse at U.S. detention facilities. Executive Director William F. Schulz asked for the prosecution of the "architects of torture policy" at the highest levels of the Bush administration.
"The refusal of the U.S. government to conduct a truly independent investigation into the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison and other detention centers is tantamount to a whitewash, if not a coverup, of these disgraceful crimes," Schulz said in a news conference at the National Press Club. He later called on foreign governments to investigate leaders such as Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld if the United States is unwilling to do so.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan said: "The allegations are ridiculous and unsupported by the facts. The United States is leading the way when it comes to protecting human rights and promoting human dignity."…..
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/25/AR2005052501395.html?sub=AR
New York Times - May 26, 2005
Documents say detainees cited
abuse of Koran by guards
By Neil A. Lewis
WASHINGTON, May 25 - Newly released documents show that detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, complained repeatedly to F.B.I. agents about disrespectful handling of the Koran by military personnel and, in one case in 2002, said they had flushed a Koran down a toilet.
The prisoners' accounts are described by the agents in detailed summaries of interrogations at Guantánamo in 2002 and 2003. The documents were among more than 300 pages turned over by the F.B.I. to the American Civil Liberties Union in recent days and publicly disclosed Wednesday.
Unlike F.B.I. documents previously disclosed in a lawsuit brought by the civil liberties union, in which agents reported that they had witnessed harsh and possibly illegal interrogation techniques, the new documents do not say the F.B.I. agents witnessed the episodes themselves. Rather, they are accounts of unsubstantiated accusations made by the prisoners during interrogation.
On Wednesday, the Pentagon dismissed the reports as containing no new evidence that abuses of the Koran had actually occurred and said that on May 14 military investigators had interviewed the prisoner who mentioned the toilet episode to the F.B.I. and that he was not able to substantiate the charge…..
One document released Wednesday is an Aug. 1, 2002, memorandum from an agent whose name is deleted that recounts a pair of interviews the previous month with a prisoner whose name is also deleted.
The prisoner said that "the guards in the detention facility do not treat him well," the agent wrote. "Their behavior is bad. About five months ago, the guards beat the detainees. They flushed a Koran in the toilet. The guards dance around when the detainees are trying to pray. The guards still do these things."
The documents include several other accounts of detainees' complaints about disrespectful handling of the Koran, but none describe its being flushed in a toilet…..
Jameel Jaffer, a senior lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union who is coordinating the review of documents obtained in the group's civil suit against the military, said the documents were part of more than 300 new pages received last Thursday from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He said staff members spent days reviewing the documents.
Ken Weine, a spokesman for Newsweek, said the magazine would have no comment on the disclosures.
The disclosures Wednesday did not support the specific assertions in the original Newsweek item that military investigators concluded that a Koran had been flushed down a toilet. They do, however, reinforce the contentions of human rights advocates and lawyers for detainees that accusations of purposeful mishandling of the Koran were common.
A former interrogator told The New York Times in a recent interview that friction over handling of the Koran began with guards' regular searches of the cells. "Some of it was just ignorance," the former interrogator said, insisting on anonymity because soldiers are barred from discussing camp operations. "They didn't realize you shouldn't handle the book roughly."
Though complaints about the handling of the Koran were routine, the former interrogator said, the situation eventually escalated. "It was two things that brought the desecration issue to a higher level," the former interrogator said. "The rumor spread among detainees that a Koran had been flushed down a toilet and that some interrogators brought Korans to the interrogation sessions and stood on them, kicked them around." The former interrogator had not witnessed those occurrences.
Erik Saar, co-author of "Inside the Wire" (Penguin Press, 2005) and an Arabic language translator in 2003 in Guantánamo said in a recent interview that "the detainees actually liked to complain about how the Koran was handled because they viewed it as a cause to rally around" and one that would get the attention of the camp's authorities.
Mr. Jaffer of the A.C.L.U. said the errors in the Newsweek report had been improperly used to discredit other information about abusive practices at Guantánamo "that were not based on anonymous sources, but government documents, reports written by F.B.I. agents."…..
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/26/politics/26koran.html?hp&ex=1117166400&en=308e55b36cfbe82c&ei=5094&partner=homepage
|
