http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/20/politics/20newsweek.htmlRed Cross Reported Koran Abuses
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
Published: May 20, 2005
The International Committee of the Red Cross said yesterday that it had given the Pentagon "multiple" reports from detainees in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, that American personnel had mishandled the Koran. The committee said the complaints from detainees then ceased. The Pentagon confirmed that it had received these reports from the committee, but characterized the incidents as minor and rare and said that detainees themselves had also mishandled the Koran.
Bryan Whitman, a spokesman for the Pentagon, said that Gen. Bantz J. Craddock, commander of the United States Southern Command, which oversees Guantánamo, was investigating reports of the Koran's being mishandled and that the results of his investigation would soon be made public. There have been previous accounts of mishandling of the Koran, but the committee's is the first from an independent source that has access to the detention camp.
Its statements, made first to The Chicago Tribune on Wednesday, came just days after Newsweek retracted an article that indirectly quoted an unnamed person as saying military investigators had reported that Americans at Guantánamo had flushed a Koran down a toilet, an account that the White House has blamed for setting off rounds of violence in Pakistan and Afghanistan and leading to at least 17 deaths. Simon Schorno, a spokesman for the Red Cross committee, declined yesterday to discuss the details in the reports of how Koran was handled and would not say whether any reports involved a Koran's being flushed down a toilet.He said the committee received "multiple allegations" of abuse of the Koran from the detainees. He said workers for the committee, which monitors the treatment of prisoners of war and works in tandem with the military to ensure that the Geneva Conventions are followed, did not witness any of the reported incidents.
Mr. Schorno said the committee began receiving the accusations in 2002, when the detainees first arrived in Guantánamo, and they continued until mid-2003. The reports were "substantial enough for us to bring to the attention of authorities," he said, and included information not only from detainees but also from military personnel. After the Red Cross submitted its reports, he said, complaints from detainees stopped. Mr. Whitman said the Pentagon had received the reports of "some mishandling by U.S. personnel and by the detainees themselves," but he said the incidents were "minor" and "inadvertent." Mr. Whitman and Mr. Schorno referred to the same number of reports but characterized the number differently. Mr. Whitman said the incidents were "rare"; Mr. Schorno said they were "multiple." Neither would release the reports.
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