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To: Lane3 who wrote (116468)	5/26/2005 8:31:22 PM
From: Lane3	Respond to of 793817

Pentagon Substantiates Cases of Koran Mistreatment By Lexie Verdon Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, May 26, 2005; 6:53 PM Investigators have found no evidence that any guards or interrogators at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, ever flushed a Koran down a toilet, although officials have substantiated five cases in which the Muslim holy book was mishandled, the general in charge of the facility said today. Brig. Gen. Jay Hood declined to provide details about these five cases, saying only that the incidents "could be broadly defined as mishandling." But he was emphatic about the allegation that touched off violent protests in several Muslim countries and prompted Newsweek magazine to retract a controversial report. "I'd like you to know that we have found no credible evidence that a member of the Joint Task Force at Guantanamo Bay ever flushed a Koran down a toilet," Hood told reporters in a news conference at the Pentagon late this afternoon. Hood said that the detainee who mentioned that incident to FBI agents has now told authorities that he did not witness it but was only reporting what he had heard from others. The statements by Hood followed the release yesterday by the American Civil Liberties Union of summaries of FBI interviews with some prisoners. One detainee told the FBI interrogators that in August 2002 a guard had "flushed a Koran in the toilet" and had beaten some prisoners. He said that the detainee was cooperating with his investigators and made clear in a recent interview with them that he had no first-hand knowledge of any mistreatment of the Koran by guards or interrogators. "We asked him was he beaten or abused . . . [and] he said no, that he wasn't beaten or abused, but that he had heard rumors that other detainees were," Hood said. "We then proceeded to ask him about any incidences where he had seen the Koran defiled, desecrated or mishandled, and he allowed as how he hadn't." Hood's investigation was triggered by an international controversy after Newsweek earlier this month reported that an internal military investigation had confirmed an account that a Koran had been thrown in the toilet. That story, which prompted protests in some countries including Afghanistan and Pakistan, was later retracted. Hood said his review, which is not yet complete, did find 13 incidents in which prisoners alleged mishandling of the Koran by personnel at the prison. Ten were by guards and three by interrogators. He refused to give specifics about the five substantiated incidents, except to say that three appeared to be deliberate mishandlings of the Koran, while the other two appeared to be to be accidental. All occurred before rules had been established for the handling of the Koran at Guantanamo, he said. In six of the other cases, he said, at issue was whether guards touched the Koran, but Hood said he considers those incidents resolved. The two remaining cases involve interrogators who were accused of touching or standing over a Koran. Of these two, the first incident does not appear to be mishandling, because it involved placing two Korans on a television. In the other incident investigators believe that the interrogators did not touch the Koran.