LAHORE, 28 June 2005 — Seventeen former prisoners at Guantanamo Bay who were detained on their return home to Pakistan were freed yesterday, with many alleging they had witnessed the desecration of the Qur’an at the US jail.

The men came back to Pakistan around nine months ago after being cleared by US authorities. They were finally released from a Pakistani jail after promising not to take part in militant activities.

“American soldiers have been committing desecration of the holy Qur’an at Guantanamo,” Hafiz Ehsan Saeed, 27, told AFP as he emerged from the central jail in the city of Lahore.

“There were various incidents. Once I saw them throw the Qur’an in a trash can,” he said.

Saeed said he was arrested four years ago in Afghanistan on charges of having links with the Al-Qaeda terror network. He was kept in a jail run by brutal Afghan warlord Abdul Rashid Dostam and then shifted to Guantanamo.

“The Americans declared me innocent but yet I have been in prison for about nine months in Rawalpindi and Lahore after being released from Guantanamo Bay,” he said.

“I am not ashamed because I have not done any wrong act,” Saeed added.

Another freed prisoner, 25-year-old Muhammad Hanif, said he was tortured and his beard was forcibly shaved by the US troops at the military jail in Cuba.

“The Americans removed our beards and have been spitting over the holy book,” Hanif said. The inmates at Guantanamo Bay protested at the abuse of the Qur’an and went on hunger strikes, he said.

A Pakistani official said the 17 men had been released on the orders of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.

“We have released 17 prisoners after their parents and guardians furnished guarantees that they would not indulge in terrorist activities,” said Tahir Ashrafi, the provincial government’s adviser on religious affairs.

“Still six to 10 Pakistani prisoners are detained at Guantanamo Bay and we hope that soon they will be here among us,” Ahsrafi added. The US government has released the bulk of some 60 Pakistanis who were kept as “enemy combatants” at Guantanamo Bay after the collapse of Afghanistan’s hard-line Taleban regime in late 2001.

Around 600 Pakistanis held in Afghanistan have also returned home, and 40 more were due to return home today, Ashrafi said.

Musharraf earlier this month condemned the desecration of the Qur’an as an “unpardonable” act and backed calls for the punishment of those found guilty.

Frequent protest rallies were held in Pakistan after a report in Newsweek magazine in early May said Guantanamo Bay interrogators threw a desecrated the Qur’an to rattle Muslim inmates. Newsweek later retracted the story.

The US Defense Department, announcing the result of an investigation this month, said that overall US soldiers at the camp handled the holy book with respect.

But it said military personnel at Guantanamo Bay once kicked the Koran and a copy was sprayed with urine in another incident.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Friday that the world body’s rights experts should have access to the base.