Accounts allege U.S. disrespect of Quran

WASHINGTON – Last week, senior Bush administration officials reacted with outrage to a Newsweek report that U.S. soldiers had desecrated the Quran at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba, and the magazine retracted the story. But allegations of disrespectful treatment of Islam’s holiest book are far from rare.

An examination of hearing transcripts, court records and government documents, as well as interviews with former detainees, their lawyers, civil liberties groups and U.S. military personnel, reveals dozens of accusations involving the Quran, not only at the naval base in Cuba but at American-run detention facilities in Afghanistan and Iraq as well.

The Pentagon is conducting an internal investigation of reported abuses at Guantanamo Bay, led by Air Force Lt. Gen. Randall Schmidt. The administration has refused to say what the investigation, still weeks from completion, has found.

But two years ago, the Army took such allegations seriously enough to institute elaborate new procedures for sensitive treatment of the holy book at the island prison camp. The changes came after inmates staged hunger strikes, and once the new procedures were implemented, complaints there stopped, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, which monitors conditions in prisons and detention facilities.

The allegations, both at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere, contain detailed descriptions of what Muslim prisoners said was mishandling of the Quran – sometimes in a deliberately provocative manner. In one instance, an Iraqi detainee alleged that a soldier had a guard dog carry a copy of the Quran in its mouth. In another, guards at Guantanamo were said to have scrawled obscenities inside Qurans.

Other prisoners said Qurans were kicked across cell floors, stomped on and thrown against walls. One said a soldier urinated on his copy, while others said guards ridiculed the religious text, declaring that Allah’s words would not save detainees in prison.

Some of the alleged incidents appear to have been inadvertent or to have sprung from lack of understanding on the part of U.S. military personnel about how sensitive Muslim detainees might be to mishandling of the Quran. In several cases, for instance, the books allegedly were knocked about during scuffles with prisoners who refused to leave their cells.

In other cases, the allegations seemed to describe instances of deliberate disrespect.

“They tore it and threw it on the floor,” former detainee Mohammad Mazouz said of guards at Guantanamo Bay. “They urinated on it. They walked on top of the Quran. They used the Quran like a carpet.”

“We told them not to do it. We begged. And then they did it some more,” said Mazouz, who was seized in Pakistan soon after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States and recently released. A Moroccan, he described the alleged incidents in a telephone interview from his home in Marrakesh.

Ahmad Naji Abid Ali al Dulaymi, confined at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq for 10 months until his release a year ago, described a soldier or noncommissioned officer known to detainees only as “Fox.” Dulaymi said prisoners were forced to strip and sit naked, were licked by dogs, and were soaked in cold water and then forced to sit in front of a powerful air-conditioner.

“But frankly,” he said, “the worst insult and humiliation they were doing to us, especially for the religious ones among us, is when they, especially Fox, tore up holy books of Quran and threw them away into the trash or into dirty water.

“Almost every day, Fox used to take a brand-new Quran, and tear off the plastic cover in front of us and then throw it away into the trash container.”

In response to the allegations of mistreatment of the Quran that set off hunger strikes at Guantanamo Bay three years ago, the U.S. Defense Department’s Southern Command, which oversees the island prison, issued four pages of guidelines instructing soldiers in the proper way of “inspecting and handling” Qurans.

In essence, the books generally are to be handled only by Muslim chaplains working for the military, and guards were no longer to touch the Quran unless absolutely necessary. Some Muslims hold that nonbelievers must not lay hands on the holy book.

The hunger strikes erupted when word swept the camp that Qurans were being misused. At that time, the Red Cross was fielding similar complaints from prisoners, and with the January 2003 written policy the problems seemed to cease.

“The ICRC believes the U.S. authorities did take corrective measures,” said Simon Schorno, a Red Cross spokesman in Washington, D.C.

Other sensitivity training is continuing. At Fort Lewis in Washington state, guards and other soldiers preparing to be deployed to Guantanamo Bay and other facilities go through classes and exercises to increase awareness of Arab and Muslim customs, said Lt. Col. Warren Perry. Much of the training deals specifically with the Quran.

“Don’t step on it, don’t bump it, don’t disrespect it,” he said.

When handling the holy book can’t be avoided, Perry said, soldiers are taught “to wash hands or put on sterile gloves before you touch.”

But several military officials suggested it was ridiculous to think guards and interrogators would bother to desecrate the Quran in an environment as dangerous as a military prison.

“There were scuffles, there were problems, the prisoners were not happy,” recalled Army Lt. Col. Raymond A. Tetreault, a Catholic priest and chaplain at Guantanamo Bay during 2002.

He said prisoners sometimes physically resisted when being removed from cells and belongings such as the Quran inadvertently would be knocked around. Other times the books had to be opened and inspected by guards to make sure weapons or other contraband were not hidden inside, he said.

“The guards were trying to do their job, and the detainees were not happy being there,” Tetreault said.

Acknowledging that detainees continue to raise allegations of Quran abuse, the chaplain said, “Well, it’s human nature to embellish a little bit.”

Although some reports on alleged Quran abuse have suggested sometimes it was used to get prisoners to talk, four interrogators interviewed by the Los Angeles Times said they never saw intentional abuse of the Quran, or even the use of it as a prop during an interrogation.

“We never took the Quran into an interrogation or used it in any way against them,” said Paul Holton, a chief warrant officer with the U.S. Army National Guard in Utah who interrogated high-level Iraqi military officers after the U.S. invasion there. “It was just understood that that was off-limits.”

It was also considered counterproductive, he said. “We figured it was going to bring about additional anger and hatred toward us,” Holton said. “With certain fanatical and religious types, you don’t want to inflame them and give them further reason to dislike us, even in an interrogation. They just become more firm, more staunch and more resistant.”

The Newsweek furor began when the magazine reported in its May 9 issue that Schmidt and his investigators “have confirmed” several infractions, including an incident where a Quran was flushed down a toilet.

The item was blamed for a series of protests overseas. At least 17 people died in rioting that erupted in several countries.

Five former prisoners have told the Times of Quran abuse. Jamal al Harith, a British Muslim, said interrogators at Guantanamo often kicked or knocked his Quran around, and he said that guards hosing down his cell once deliberated targeted his holy book.

“Everybody was upset, but when you are in Cuba you learn to accept,” Harith said after returning to Britain. “You accept it as the norm when you are in there.”

Other accounts from former detainees have been posted on the Internet. Tarek Dergoul, another British Muslim who was held at Guantanamo Bay, recalled soldiers insulting Islam.

“They used to read the English translation of the Quran with their feet up, mocking, for example saying, ‘There are more questions in it than answers,’ ” he said.

And some allegations are contained in lawsuits, such as one filed against U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld by seven men held in Iraq and Afghanistan.

One of the plaintiffs is Arkan M. Ali, who was confined by U.S. authorities in Iraq for nearly a year, including a stint at Abu Ghraib.

He listed 11 incidents of torture and abuse. He said twice he was beaten unconscious during interrogations. He said his arm was stabbed and sliced, his forearm shocked and burned. He said he was locked for several days in a wooden coffinlike box, sometimes naked except for a hood over his head.

But it is his 11th and final allegation that in today’s clamor over the Quran that stands out. Ali said U.S. soldiers repeatedly desecrated the Quran in front of him and other prisoners, “including having a military dog pick up the Quran in its mouth.”