Newly Released Documents Show Koran Abuse Charges
The documents keep coming. You can read them here. The documents recently obtained by the ACLU show detainee claims of Koran desecration by Guards at Guantanamo in 2002. Many of the documents are interviews with prisoners and show that officials were aware of the claims.
Via Press Release today, the ACLU reports:
New documents released by the FBI include previously undisclosed interviews in which prisoners at Guantánamo complain that guards have mistreated the Koran, the American Civil Liberties Union said today. In one 2002 summary, an FBI interrogator notes a prisoner’s allegation that guards flushed a Koran down the toilet.
The disclosure comes on the heels of controversy over a Newsweek report saying that government investigators had corroborated an almost identical incident. Newsweek ultimately retracted its story because a confidential government source could not be confirmed.
According to the FBI documents, a detainee interviewed in August 2002 said that guards had flushed the Koran in the toilet. Others reported the Koran being kicked, withheld as punishment, and thrown on the floor, and said they were mocked during prayers.
In the documents released today, one detainee informs his FBI interviewers that using the Koran “as a reprisal or as an incentive for cooperation has failed,” and that the only result would be “the damage caused to the reputation of the United States once what had occurred was released to the world.” While another detainee acknowledged that there might be “a legitimate need to search the book for hidden items,” he objected to the abusive manner in which the searches were conducted.
“The United States government’s own documents show that it has known of numerous allegations of Koran desecration for a significant period of time,” said Amrit Singh, an attorney with the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project. “Its failure to address these allegations in a timely manner raises grave questions regarding the extent to which such desecration was authorized by high-ranking U.S. officials in the first place.”
In addition to the charges of Koran abuse, the new documents include allegations of beatings, hunger strikes, planned suicide attempts and more.
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