FBI memo reports Guantanamo guards flushing Koran

moghrabi

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May 25, 2004
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An FBI agent wrote in a 2002 document made public on Wednesday that a detainee held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had accused American jailers there of flushing the Koran down a toilet.

The Pentagon said the allegation was not credible.

The declassified document's release came the week after the Bush administration denounced as wrong a May 9 Newsweek article that stated U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo had flushed a Koran down a toilet to try to make detainees talk. The magazine retracted the article, which had triggered protests in Afghanistan in which 16 people died.

The newly released document, dated Aug. 1, 2002, contained a summary of statements made days earlier by a detainee, whose name was redacted, in two interviews with an FBI special agent, whose name also was withheld, at the Guantanamo prison for foreign terrorism suspects.

The American Civil Liberties Union released the memo and other FBI documents it obtained from the government under court order through the Freedom of Information Act.

"Personally, he has nothing against the United States. The guards in the detention facility do not treat him well. Their behavior is bad. About five months ago, the guards beat the detainees. They flushed a Koran in the toilet," the FBI agent wrote.

"It's not credible," chief Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said of the allegation regarding a Koran in a toilet.

Di Rita said the U.S. military questioned the detainee on May 14, and that the man was "very cooperative and answered the questions but did not corroborate the allegation recorded on Aug. 1, 2002." Di Rita said he did not know whether the man actually recanted the allegation.

"These kind of, sort of, fantastic charges about our guys doing something willfully heinous to a Koran for the purposes of rattling detainees are not credible on their face," Di Rita told reporters.

HOLY BOOK

The documents indicated that detainees were making allegations that they had been abused and that the Muslim holy book had been mishandled as early as April 2002, about three months after the first detainees arrived at Guantanamo.

In other documents, FBI agents stated that Guantanamo detainees also accused U.S. personnel of kicking the Koran and throwing it to the floor, and described beatings by guards. But one document cited a detainee who accused a guard of dropping a Koran, prompting an "uprising" by prisoners, when it was the prisoner himself who dropped it.

"Unfortunately, one thing we've learned over the last couple of years is that detainee statements about their treatment at Guantanamo and other detention centers sometimes have turned out to be more credible than U.S. government statements," said ACLU lawyer Jameel Jaffer.

Former detainees and a lawyer for current prisoners previously have stated that U.S. personnel at Guantanamo had placed the Koran in a toilet, but the Pentagon has said it also does not view those allegations as credible.

In document written in April 2003, an FBI agent related a detainee's account of an incident involving a female U.S. interrogator.

"While the guards held him, she removed her blouse, embraced the detainee from behind and put her hand on his genitals. The interrogator was on her menstrual period and she wiped blood from her body on his face and head," the memo stated.

A similar incident was described in a recent book written by a former Guantanamo interrogator.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan last week said Newsweek "got the facts wrong" and Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman called the article "demonstrably false." Di Rita said last week the Pentagon had received "no credible and specific allegations" that U.S. personnel had put a Koran in the toilet.


http://reuters.myway.com//article/2...IDST_0_NEWS-SECURITY-GUANTANAMO-KORAN-DC.html
 

Derry McKinney

Electoral Member
May 21, 2005
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RE: FBI memo reports Guan

Amnesty International is referring to Guantanamo as a gulag. Apt description. The Newsweek story is funny too...the Pentagon checked it out before it went to press and had no problem with the part about the Koran being flushed down the toilet.

The Bush regime is lying to us again.
 

badboy

Nominee Member
Apr 13, 2005
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Re: RE: FBI memo reports Guan

Derry McKinney said:
Amnesty International is referring to Guantanamo as a gulag. Apt description. The Newsweek story is funny too...the Pentagon checked it out before it went to press and had no problem with the part about the Koran being flushed down the toilet.

Deleted...
 

Derry McKinney

Electoral Member
May 21, 2005
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RE: FBI memo reports Guan

Sorry BlueBoy, Rev isn't here.

If you'd taken the time read anything, you would have found that nobody was referring to flushing the whole Koran at once, but tearing out a few pages at time and flushing them in an attempt to force people to talk. Since those people are deeply religious, that is an affront to decency.

You aren't here to make any points though. Instead you are here to insult people and change the subject in the hope of keeping people from having any real discussion about the crimes that George Bush and his henchmen commit.
 

moghrabi

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May 25, 2004
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He could stay here as long as he wants. He will not change one bit of the ugly crimes of Bush and some of his people. Bush is a liar and a son of a liar. Anyone defending his actions is a liar also. Anyone for a discussion of the lying part?

You are really a bad boy badboy!!!!!!!
 

Rev2

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May 26, 2005
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You guys can high five your asses off, little minds and very small outlook on what really happens in the world. Stay in your basements and I’ll see the world real time.

inciting edited and posted in moderator forum....
 

DasFX

Electoral Member
Dec 6, 2004
859
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What's the big deal?

Now, I'm going to get a lot of heat for this, but really what is the big deal with this whole Koran thing.

Sure it wasn't very nice and it was disrespectful. But what of the countless times I see the American flag being burned or desecrated. I mean, the flag is something that is considered sacred to a lot of people. I think people are blowing this out of proportion. It was wrong, but it isn't the end of the world.
 

moghrabi

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May 25, 2004
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Re: RE: FBI memo reports Guantanamo guards flushing Koran

missile said:
If I was there,and ran out of toilet paper,a koran's pages would do nicely.

I don't know your background but what you just said is very disrespectful to a lot of people.

Look at it another way. If this was the Jewish holy book, what do you think would have happened? They will scream another Holocaust. The whole world will come to their side. They will request more aids from the states. They will issue demands to bring the offenders to justice right away. They will have more reasons to let other Jewish to enter the occupied land and take more and more.

Disrespecting anyone's sacred book is not acceptable. Being a holy book or the flag.
 

I think not

Hall of Fame Member
Apr 12, 2005
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Re: RE: FBI memo reports Guantanamo guards flushing Koran

moghrabi said:
missile said:
If I was there,and ran out of toilet paper,a koran's pages would do nicely.

I don't know your background but what you just said is very disrespectful to a lot of people.

He still has the right to express that opinion no matter how disrespectful it is to others.

Look at it another way. If this was the Jewish holy book, what do you think would have happened? They will scream another Holocaust. The whole world will come to their side. They will request more aids from the states. They will issue demands to bring the offenders to justice right away. They will have more reasons to let other Jewish to enter the occupied land and take more and more.

I agree with you here mog.

Disrespecting anyone's sacred book is not acceptable. Being a holy book or the flag.

It's called freedom of speech, as is flag burning
 

peapod

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Jun 26, 2004
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Right. Okay I am not babysitting you lot all day..I actually have a real job with things to do. Everyone please be barely civil...don't make me come back with my father's belt. :twisted:
 

missile

House Member
Dec 1, 2004
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Isreal is offering a large sum of money to any young Jewish person as an inducement to get them to settle there. Did I word that PC enough for the more thin skinned of us here?
 

DasFX

Electoral Member
Dec 6, 2004
859
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Re: RE: FBI memo reports Guantanamo guards flushing Koran

missile said:
If I was there,and ran out of toilet paper,a koran's pages would do nicely.

This comment is fine as long as you are just as likely to use pages from the Bible, Torrah, Gita or other holy books in the same situation.

Disrespecting anyone's sacred book is not acceptable. Being a holy book or the flag.

It's called freedom of speech, as is flag burning

There should be limits to the law. Although you are correct, there is not law banning it. In fact the proper way to dispose of a flag, American or Canadian is to burn it. Also, there is nothing in law banning the burning of Holy books, however there is something in terms of the morality and in terms of knowing what is going too far.

As for moghrabi's outrage, it is understandable, considering you are Muslim, but there have been many times holy books of other faiths have been desecrated.
 

Reverend Blair

Council Member
Apr 3, 2004
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RE: FBI memo reports Guan

Considering the general devoutness of the Muslims being held at Guantanamo, combined with the belief in cleanliness that is inherent in that religion, it is a major affront to defile their holy book.

I have no particular beliefs right now. I was raised Catholic, but if somebody was to flush pages from the Bible down the toilet my concern would be for the plumbing.

What is happening at Guantanamo, and wherever else the US is torturing political prisoners, is religious and cultural discrimination of the most brutal kind. If somebody did that to George Bush, he'd be screaming like weasel in a leg hold trap.

It is not comparable to burning a flag in any way. Burning a flag is a political act as old as flags themselves. It is something done by citizens protesting against their own government as well as those protesting against the actions of another country.
 

Vanni Fucci

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Dec 26, 2004
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This may not surprise some, but I say burn them all, and then come up with something a little less intolerant of other beliefs so as to deprive fundamentalists and extremists of the fuel for their fire...

One of the most damaging aspects of most religions is that their holy books contend that theirs is the only way to God/G_d/Allah/Brahma-Vishnu-Shiva/Enlightenment/Etc...so anyone believing anything else is wrong, and not worthy of paradise. In many cases, the scriptures openly advocate violence and death toward unbelievers. There are as well, many instances where the scriptures declare other segments of our society, ie homosexuals, to be evil, and that they should be reviled and killed. How is it that this hatred is allowed to continue in the context of a free and just society.

The protection for religious freedom under the Charter has allowed for state sanctioned hate crimes, as the clergy stand at their pulpits and decry the evils of homosexuality. The hatred has got to stop, as does the intolerance, and even the tolerance towards other people and beliefs, and they need to be replaced with equality for all, because that is what the Charter of Rights and Freedoms stands for. Not to protect the various religious factions as they openly promote hatred.

Religious tolerance, is just that, tolerance towards people of other beliefs, and does not in anyway promote religious equality, but rather still contains an underlying hostility that has yet to be reconciled in our modern society.

I'm not saying that all religion should be abolished, although that would solve a lot of the problems facing the world today, but I am saying that the religious texts need to be revised to allow for equality of all people and belief systems.

By definition, the Holy Bible/Quran/Torah/Rig Veda/Etc. should be considered hate literature under the Criminal Code of Canada.

I don't recall hearing about this in the news...

Worldnet Daily article on Svend Robinson's bill

I watched a committe debating bill C-38 the other night, where Vic Toews was arguing that the bill, if read into law, would infringe upon religious freedoms. Yeah, a pity that the church won't be able to discriminate against homosexuals anymore...

Ok, I'm done ranting now...carry on...