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A BoomanTribune exclusive investigative project
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By Martin Longman (BooMan) and SusanHu (SusanHu)
Reprinted at MyDD
These are dark times. Our government has engaged in acts so vile, so inhumane, and so shameful, that we cannot allow the truth to be published without it causing an international crisis.
When Newsweek published an account that "interrogators, in an attempt to rattle suspects, flushed a Qur'an down a toilet and led a detainee around with a collar and dog leash", they were not breaking any news.
Accounts of this sort have been in the public square for over two years (see below).
The only novelty to Newsweek's report was that a `senior U.S. government official', who was knowledgeable about Southern Command's investigation into Gitmo abuse, verified it. This anonymous source has since backtracked on a very specific aspect of the story.
On Saturday, Isikoff spoke to his original source, the senior government official, who said that he clearly recalled reading investigative reports about mishandling the Qur'an, including a toilet incident. But the official, still speaking anonymously, could no longer be sure that these concerns had surfaced in the SouthCom report.
Newsweek: Evan Thomas
The source is no longer sure that he read accounts of Qur'anic desecration in the Southern Command report. But he still remembers reading about Qur'anic desecration. It would be interesting to know whether the source read those `investigative reports' in other official government documents, or in the variety of newspapers and magazines that have reported on this issue since 2002.
It's not hard to find these accounts. A simple Google search will do.
But I took the extra step today of contacting an attorney that is representing over ten Guantánamo detainees. He works for a prominent, private, Washington, D.C. law firm, and has visited Guantánamo four times since late last year. All of his clients share the same nationality and, partly for this reason, all of his clients have been kept in complete isolation from each other.
Seeing his clients is not easy. First of all, it requires a week's stay in barracks to meet with all his clients for a sufficient amount of time. The barracks are located on the other side of the base from the camps, and the two and half-hour transit time involves a bus and a ferry.
He must prepare, in advance, a list of which clients he wishes to see, and in what order. Once, he was told that the guards could not locate one of his clients.
He meets with his clients one-by-one, never in groups. The detainees have had no contact with each other, and no opportunity to collaborate on false allegations of abuse.
I asked him, "Have you heard any accounts of Qur'anic desecration?"
He replied, "Yes, two detainees told me completely independently that they had witnessed a Qur'an being thrown in the toilet. Another told me that he had witnessed a Qur'an being stomped on. And another told me he had witnessed a Qur'an being urinated on."
He continued, "Most disturbances, like hunger strikes, have been over religious issues, like non-Muslims handling the Koran." I asked how the guards were supposed to supply Qur'ans to the detainees without handling them? He told me that the Muslim chaplains could provide this service, but there were fewer and fewer chaplains available.
I am aware that anonymous sources are part of the controversy over the Newsweek article, so I called Tina Foster of the Counsel for the Center for Constitutional Rights' Guantánamo Global Justice Initiative. The GGJI is a new litigation and advocacy project, introduced on April 12, 2005, "dedicated to challenging rendition, arbitrary detention, and interrogation under torture committed as part of the United States' global 'war on terror'".
Ms. Foster's group is co-counsel for many of the Guantánamo detainees, and they have a `bird's eye view' of the allegations coming out of Gitmo. I asked her if she had heard of reports of Qur'anic desecration. She replied, "It's one of a panoply of abuses that have occurred at Guantánamo, reported over and over again, both to counsel and by releasees."
I asked her what she thought of the allegations made in the Newsweek article. She told me, "They have been repeatedly confirmed. We have heard allegations of `tossing' based on religious beliefs, shaving of beards, prisoners being made to wear short pants, or having their pants taken away from them, not having the proper clothes given to them that are appropriate for prayer."
Both sources took the same path in our conversations. First they confirmed that there were multiple independent allegations of Qur'anic desecration coming from Gitmo detainees; then they framed this outrage in the context of a more general program of religious humiliation.
My anonymous source told me that his clients were punished by the loss of showering privileges, the withholding of soap, and the removal of water basins used for ablution.
He also claimed his firm tried to provide their clients with books on Tafsîr. Tafsîr, or `exegesis', of the Qur'ân is considered the most important `science' for Muslims.
"All matters concerning the Islamic way of life are connected to it in one sense or another since the right application of Islam is based on proper understanding of the guidance from Allah. Without tafsîr there would be no right understanding of various passages of the Qur'ân."
Islamic Awareness.
The government refused, without explanation, to allow books on Tafsîr. I asked Ms. Foster about this and she told me, "As a general matter it has been extremely difficult to get them reading materials, particularly in their own language."
The D.C. lawyer also alleged that one of the Administrative Review Board's criteria for deeming a detainee too dangerous to release was whether or not they prayed in their cell. You pray, you stay. Asked about this, Ms. Foster was so skeptical about the ARB's that she questioned whether they use "any rational criteria at all."
[As an aside, he also mentioned that "excessive anti-Bush sentiments" were considered grounds for denying release.]
Taking all of this into consideration, how should we view Newsweek and their anonymous source? How should we view the rhetoric coming from the Pentagon and the right-wing blogosphere?
"People are dead because of what this son of a bitch said."
-Pentagon spokesman, Lawrence DiRita
"
Newsweek has blood on its hands. Blood on its desks. Isikoff should cough up his source."
-
Michelle Malkin
Why would they say this?
Because on May 6th, Pakistan's equivalent of Michael Jordan, star cricket player Imran Khan, held a press conference:
Brandishing a copy of that week's NEWSWEEK (dated May 9), Khan read a report that U.S. interrogators at Guantánamo prison had placed the Qur'an on toilet seats and even flushed one. "This is what the U.S. is doing," exclaimed Khan, "desecrating the Qur'an." His remarks, as well as the outraged comments of Muslim clerics and Pakistani government officials, were picked up on local radio and played throughout neighboring Afghanistan. Radical Islamic foes of the U.S.-friendly regime of Hamid Karzai quickly exploited local discontent with a poor economy and the continued presence of U.S. forces, and riots began breaking out last week.
Newsweek: Evan Thomas
Imran Khan was incensed that America has been desecrating the Qur'an. The Newsweek piece was confirmation. The government was admitting what had long been alleged. Riots ensued. People were killed. President Pervez Musharraf and his prime minister, Shaukat Aziz, demanded an investigation. Saudi Arabia expressed concern. Yemen denounced us. The Organization of the Islamic Conference complained. The Arab League demanded an apology. Demonstrations broke out in Palestine, Indonesia, and elsewhere. The sudden fury of Muslims surprised Washington.
Dr. Rice's reaction is probably more telling than she intended:
"It's appalling that this story got out there," secretary of state Condoleezza Rice said as she travelled home from Iraq.
Mr. Rumsfeld's reaction is just chilling:
"People lost their lives. People are dead," defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Capitol Hill. "People need to be very careful about what they say, just as they need to be careful about what they do."
Scotsman
To Dr. Rice I say, "What's appalling is that this story is out there to tell." To Mr Rumsfeld I say, "I am fully aware that what I say may wind up causing the deaths of angry protestors, damaging national security, endangering our troops, and destabilizing the governments of U.S. allies. But this is your fault."
I have weighed long and hard whether I should write this article. I know that providing evidence that the U.S. Government and the mainstream media are engaged in a dishonest effort at damage control is going to undermine our ability to put a lid on Muslim outrage. But the truth is already out there.
This effort to put our mistreatment of Muslims and our disrespect for Islam back in Pandora's Box is not going to work. Any short-term damage the truth will do, will be overwhelmed by the long-term damage of allowing this abuse and disrespect to continue.
The world needs to know that most Americans, and certainly the vast majority of people on the left, do not support these policies. We don't care whether the government is ready to admit the truth and accept the consequences. We are speaking out.
The Bush administration has lost all its credibility. They lost it by lying about the threat presented by Saddam Hussein. They lost it by fabricating evidence about weapons of mass destruction. They lost it by cynically pretending to be interested in a diplomatic solution to Iraq's non-compliance with U.N. resolutions, when the Downing Street Minutes show the administration was bent on war from the beginning. They lost it at Abu Ghraib. They lost it by stating that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to prisoners at Guantanamo. They lost it by farming torture out to our sworn enemy, Syria, and the human rights nadir of Uzbekistan.
No amount of spin is going to repair the damage done to America's image and legacy. Only the resignation of the entire administration could even begin to accomplish that task.
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Below is a comprehensive list of published allegations of Qur'anic desecration that pre-date the Newsweek article with the exception of citations 1, 10, and 11:
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1. The New York Times, May 17, 2005, "Newsweek Says It Is Retracting Koran Report":
Last month, a former American interrogator confirmed to The New York Times an account given in an interview by a former Kuwaiti detainee, Nasser Nijer Naser al-Mutairi, who said that mishandling of the Koran once led to a major hunger strike. The strike ended only after a senior officer expressed regret over the camp's loudspeaker system, which was simultaneously translated by linguists at the end of each cell block, the former interrogator said.
In that case, the accusations were of copies of the Koran being tossed on the floor in a pile and treated roughly, but there was no assertion that any had been put in the toilet.
Erik Saar, a co-author of the book "Inside the Wire" and an Arabic language translator at Guantánamo from January to June 2003, said in an interview Monday that while he "never saw anything along the lines of a Koran being flushed down a toilet," the issue of how guards and interrogators handled the book was a chronic problem. ... [C]ommanders tried to deal with detainees' sensitivity about the Koran in several ways, including enlisting some of the Muslims working for the military as translators to handle the books during inspections, so that nonbelievers would not touch the books. But that was not always done, he said, and there was no regular policy. The issue "created friction and problems all the time," he said.
2. From Carl Conetta, Project on Defense Alternatives, by e-mail:
One such incident (during which the Koran was thrown into a pile and stepped on) prompted a hunger strike among Guantanamo detainees in March 2002. Regarding this, the New York Times in a 1 May 2005 article interviewed a former detainee, Nasser Nijer Naser al-Mutairi, who said the protest ended with a senior officer delivering an apology to the entire camp. And the Times reports: "A former interrogator at Guantanamo, in an interview with The Times, confirmed the accounts of the hunger strikes, including the public expression of regret over the treatment of the Korans." (Neil A. Lewis and Eric Schmitt, "
Inquiry Finds Abuses at Guantanamo Bay," New York Times, 1 May 2005, p. 35.)
The hunger strike and apology story is also confirmed by another former detainee, Shafiq Rasul, interviewed by the UK Guardian in 2003 (James Meek, "The people the law forgot," The Guardian, 3 December 2003, p. 1.) It was also confirmed by former prisoner Jamal al-Harith in an interview with the Daily Mirror (Rosa Prince and Gary Jones, "My Hell in Camp X-ray World Exclusive," Daily Mirror, 12 March 2004).
3. From Carl Conetta, Project on Defense Alternatives, by e-mail:
Also citing the toilet incident is testimony by Asif Iqbal, a former Guatanamo detainee who was released to British custody in March 2004 and subsequently freed without charge:
"The behaviour of the guards towards our religious practices as well as the Koran was also, in my view, designed to cause us as much distress as possible. They would kick the Koran, throw it into the toilet and generally disrespect it." (Center for Constitution Rights, Detention in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, (4 August 2004, deposition available at ccr-ny.org)
4. Tarek Derghoul, another of the British detainees, similarly cites instances of Koran desecration in an interview with Cageprisoners.com.
5. Desecration of the Koran was also mentioned by former Guantanamo detainee Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost and reported by the BBC in early May 2005. (Haroon Rashid, "Ex-inmates share Guantanamo ordeal," 2 May 2005).
6. "Lawyers allege abuse of 12 at Guantanamo," The Philadelphia Inquirer, Jan. 20, 2005: Some detainees complained of religious humiliation, saying guards had defaced their copies of the Koran and, in one case, had thrown it in a toilet, said Kristine Huskey [an attorney in Washington, D.C.], who interviewed clients late last month. Others said that pills were hidden in their food and that people came to their cells claiming to be their attorneys, to gain information.
7. From the Center for Constitutional Rights, New York City, NY and linked as a footnote in a Human Rights Watch report:
72.They were never given prayer mats and initially they didn't get a Koran. When the Korans were provided, they were kicked and thrown about by the guards and on occasion thrown in the buckets used for the toilets. This kept happening. When it happened it was always said to be an accident but it was a recurrent theme
8. From the Center for Constitutional Rights, New York City, NY and linked as a footnote in a Human Rights Watch report:
74. Asif says that `it was impossible to pray because initially we did not know the direction to pray, but also given that we couldn't move and the harassment from the guards, it was simply not feasible. The behaviour of the guards towards our religious practices as well as the Koran was also, in my view, designed to cause us as much distress as possible. They would kick the Koran, throw it into the toilet and generally disrespect it. It is clear to me that the conditions in our cells and our general treatment were designed by the officers in charge of the interrogation process to "soften us up"'.
9. From the Center for Constitutional Rights, New York City, NY and linked as a footnote in a Human Rights Watch report:
Statement of Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Rhuhel Ahmed, "Detention in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay," released publicly on August 4, 2004, para. 72, 74, available online at:
http://www.ccr-
ny.org/v2/reports/docs/
Gitmo=compositestatementFINAL23july04.pdf,
accessed on August 19, 2004. The disrespect of the Koran by guards at Camp X-Ray was one of the factors prompting a hunger strike. Ibid., para. 111-117.
10. The Los Angeles Times, May 16, 2005, "Newsweek Says It Is Retracting Koran Report":
A Newsweek journalist familiar with the reporting on the story agreed with his editor's regrets Monday, but said it appeared the administration was seizing on the error to minimize the abuse allegations.
"The issue of how prisoners are treated at Guantanamo has not gone away," said the journalist, who asked not to be named. "Now they want to deflect that by talking about how irresponsible Newsweek magazine was."
[......................]
The Newsweek editor noted that earlier news accounts reported desecration of the Quran, as well. "For some reason," he added, "at this particular time, ours was the match that lit a fire."
11. Raw Story, May 16, 2005, "Newsweek report on Quran matches many earlier accounts":
Contrary to White House assertions, the allegations of religious desecration at Guantanamo published by Newsweek May 6 are common among ex-prisoners and have been widely reported outside the United States,
RAW STORY has learned. ...
12. From the Complaint, Rasul v. Rumsfeld, filed October 27, 2004:
78. On various occasions, Plaintiffs' efforts to pray were banned or interrupted. Plaintiffs were never given prayer mats and did not initially receive copies of the Koran. Korans were provided to them after approximately a month. On one occasion, a guard in Plaintiff Ahmed's cellblock noticed a copy of the Koran on the floor and kicked it. On another occasion, a guard threw a copy of the Koran in a toilet bucket. Detainees, including Plaintiffs, were also at times prevented from calling out the call to prayer, with American soldiers either silencing the person who was issuing the prayer call or playing loud music to drown out the call to prayer. This was part of a continuing pattern of disrespect and contempt for Plaintiffs religious beliefs and practices.
13. Corrente.blogspot.com provides numerous press citations, without links, of the use of desecration of the Koran to humiliate prisoners. For example, Corrente cites "BBC Monitoring International Reports, June 26, 2004, RUSSIAN TV INTERVIEWS FREED GUANTANAMO PRISONERS... bucket instead of a toilet. People were in cells, ... ... floor. (Vahitov) They tore the Koran to pieces in front of us, threw it into the toilet."