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ABC News
State Department tries to undo Newsweek damage
By TERENCE HUNT
May. 17, 2005 - The State Department, moving to undo damage it says was caused by a Newsweek article alleging U.S. desecration of the Quran, the Muslim holy book, is telling its embassies to spread the word abroad that America respects all religious faiths.
In a two-page cable sent Monday night to all U.S. diplomatic posts, the department told the ambassadors to inform host governments and local media that Newsweek had retracted its report that investigators found evidence interrogators at the U.S. naval prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, desecrated the Quran.
The Pentagon has found nothing to substantiate the allegations, the cable noted, adding, "The U.S. government will continue to investigate all credible allegations of misconduct and will take action against those responsible if the allegations are substantiated."
Newsweek on Monday retracted the report in its May 9 issue after officials in the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department criticized its publication and its use of an anonymous source. Protests in Afghanistan, where more than a dozen people died and scores were injured in rioting, and demonstrations elsewhere in the Muslim world were blamed on the article.
"We condemn all acts inciting violent protest and we express our sympathies to those injured in recent demonstrations and to the families of those killed," the State Department cable said. "We urge all members of the press to provide the same wide coverage to the magazine's retraction as was given to the original allegations."
The United States, the cable said, "is a tolerant society in which freedom of religion for all faiths is ardently defended.... Disrespect of the Holy Quran is not, has not been and will never be the policy of the United States."
The White House on Monday said the magazine had taken a "good first step" by retracting its story, but it wants the magazine to do more to repair damage caused by the article.
"The report had real consequences," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Monday. "People have lost their lives. Our image abroad has been damaged. There are some who are opposed to the United States and what we stand for who have sought to exploit this allegation. It will take work to undo what can be undone."
McClellan said Newsweek should try to set the record straight by "clearly explaining what happened and how they got it wrong, particularly to the Muslim world, and pointing out the policies and practices of our military."….
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=764922
USA Today - May 17, 2005
Detainees' lawsuits allege Quran desecration
Toni Locy
Current and former detainees have been alleging for more than a year that U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have desecrated the Quran - but none of the allegations has been substantiated by military investigators.
The claims are made in some of the 65 lawsuits that have been filed in U.S. District Court in Washington on behalf of nearly 180 detainees, as well as in accounts given to human rights workers.
For instance, a lawsuit filed this year in Illinois by the American Civil Liberties Union against Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld recounts a claim by a detainee in Iraq who says soldiers allowed a military dog to carry the Islamic holy book in the animal's mouth.
Another lawsuit filed in Washington in January on behalf of 12 Kuwaiti detainees held at Guantanamo Bay alleges that American soldiers tore up the Quran and threw pages into toilets as part of a humiliation tactic…..
The Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York-based civil liberties group that represents several detainees in lawsuits, says that interviews with detainees and government documents have revealed a systemic use of religious abuse as an interrogation tactic to humiliate prisoners.
In a statement Monday, the group says that the abuses include sexual taunting, depriving detainees of long pants during prayer times, deliberate interference with prayers, wrapping a prisoner in an Israeli flag, desecration and mishandling of the Quran.
U.S. troops' handling of the Quran is not a new issue. It was a key cause of detainees' first hunger strike at Guantanamo in 2002, says John Sifton, a researcher with Human Rights Watch in New York.
Detainees had alleged that a soldier had thrown the Quran on the ground. Military commanders responded to the hunger strike by making significant changes in conditions at the prison regarding religious practices, Sifton said.
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0517quran-lawsuits17.html
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