WASHINGTON, 28 May 2005 — The US government has come under fierce criticism regarding mistreatment of the Holy Qur’an at the US detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The Pentagon announced Thursday that investigators had identified five instances of military “mishandling” of the Qur’an. Brig. Gen. Jay Hood refused to specify the nature of the mishandling at the prison facility other than to say it did not involve placing it in a toilet. The findings of the ongoing investigation mark the first time that a Pentagon official has confirmed that the Qur’an has been abused at Guantanamo.
The FBI also released documents this week that include previously undisclosed interviews with Guantanamo detainees, detailing incidents of Qur’an abuse.
A report released by Amnesty International USA Wednesday criticized the US prisoner interrogation policy, calling it torture, and said the US is not the champion of human rights it calls itself.
The human rights group compares US treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay to the old Soviet prison system, calling it the “gulag of our times”.
The American Civil Liberties Union also sharply criticized the US government after the reports from Pentagon officials and the FBI.
“It’s unfortunate when Americans do things that are insult to other religions and culture,” said Judith Kipper, director, Middle East Forum at the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations. “But I think that what Americans are learning from this is that we need to educate ourselves about Islam, and other cultures. Because, unfortunately, American men and women who were sent into harms way are dealing with Muslim people, foreign languages and religions they don’t know and understand, and therefore are often clumsy and inappropriate.
“What disturbs me is that the US government is getting away with Guantanamo abuses, where there is no oversight, and we don’t know what’s going on. That will only change when the American people demand something different. I find the fact that the American people are tolerating this very disturbing,” said Kipper.
Guantanamo has generated controversy globally in recent weeks. Bush administration denounced as wrong a May 9 Newsweek article, later retracted by the magazine, that stated US interrogators at Guantanamo had flushed a copy of the Qur’an down a toilet to try to make detainees talk.
“The pressures put to bear on Newsweek were a form of censorship by the administration. There’s been a tremendous pressure not to report on this story,” said James Paul, executive director of the New York-based Global Policy Forum. “This is all about physically and mentally abusing prisoners, which is what this is all about — taking something very sacred to people and desecrating it,” said Paul.
