no surprise that newsweek recanted the story--- but seems like it really did happen...

http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2005/5/17/7487/14941

"these are dark times --newsweek and the koran"

* seems that lawyers for prisoners at gitmo bay have been mentioning for some time complaints from their clients concerning the abuse of inmates as well as disrespect by jailers for the islamic faith in general ... but what do people really expect when the bush administration chose in its infamous "war on terror" to claim it does not have to follow either the geneva accords respecting the human rights of prisoners of war ,or the Us bill of rights concerning civil rights of americans it has charged along with foreigners with the dubious all-purpose labels of terrorists and "enemy combatants" .

using syrians , and uzbeks and most likely israeli interrogators disguised in Us uniforms, to carry out torture and psychological humiliation of prisoners , does not keep the hands of the bush administration clean in any way---the members of the bush administration are all guilty of lying to the world about this war on terror , and as the recent british documents show , guilty of lying to the world about the reasons for the war in iraq and guilty of lying about torture and abuse of prisoners they have taken during the course of these wars...

curiously , when it becomes time to take individual responsibility for these abuses ---the "people need to take individual responsibility for their actions " folks on the right seem to rely on blaming scapegoats like that "private lindy" dog collar chick seen in the abu ghraib photos ...guess this is another example of modern "outsourcing" --the outsourcing of individual responsibility for crimes and abuses committed under your administration's watch of "leadership"... how typical...



http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2005/5/17/7487/14941

By Martin Longman (BooMan) and SusanHu (SusanHu)
Reprinted at Daily Kos and MyDD

"...It’s not hard to find these accounts. A simple Google search will do.

But I took the extra step today of contacting an attorney that is representing over ten Guantánamo detainees. He works for a prominent, private, Washington, D.C. law firm, and has visited Guantánamo four times since late last year. All of his clients share the same nationality and, partly for this reason, all of his clients have been kept in complete isolation from each other.

Seeing his clients is not easy. First of all, it requires a week’s stay in barracks to meet with all his clients for a sufficient amount of time. The barracks are located on the other side of the base from the camps, and the two and half-hour transit time involves a bus and a ferry.

He must prepare, in advance, a list of which clients he wishes to see, and in what order. Once, he was told that the guards could not locate one of his clients.

He meets with his clients one-by-one, never in groups. The detainees have had no contact with each other, and no opportunity to collaborate on false allegations of abuse.

I asked him, “Have you heard any accounts of Qur’anic desecration?”

He replied, “Yes, two detainees told me completely independently that they had witnessed a Qur’an being thrown in the toilet. Another told me that he had witnessed a Qur’an being stomped on. And another told me he had witnessed a Qur’an being urinated on.”

He continued, “Most disturbances, like hunger strikes, have been over religious issues, like non-Muslims handling the Koran.” I asked how the guards were supposed to supply Qur’ans to the detainees without handling them? He told me that the Muslim chaplains could provide this service, but there were fewer and fewer chaplains available.

I am aware that anonymous sources are part of the controversy over the Newsweek article, so I called Tina Foster of the Counsel for the Center for Constitutional Rights' Guantánamo Global Justice Initiative. The GGJI is a new litigation and advocacy project, introduced on April 12, 2005, "dedicated to challenging rendition, arbitrary detention, and interrogation under torture committed as part of the United States’ global 'war on terror'".

Ms. Foster’s group is co-counsel for many of the Guantánamo detainees, and they have a ‘bird’s eye view’ of the allegations coming out of Gitmo. I asked her if she had heard of reports of Qur’anic desecration. She replied, “It’s one of a panoply of abuses that have occurred at Guantánamo, reported over and over again, both to counsel and by releasees.”

I asked her what she thought of the allegations made in the Newsweek article. She told me, “They have been repeatedly confirmed. We have heard allegations of ‘tossing’ based on religious beliefs, shaving of beards, prisoners being made to wear short pants, or having their pants taken away from them, not having the proper clothes given to them that are appropriate for prayer.”

Both sources took the same path in our conversations. First they confirmed that there were multiple independent allegations of Qur’anic desecration coming from Gitmo detainees; then they framed this outrage in the context of a more general program of religious humiliation.

My anonymous source told me that his clients were punished by the loss of showering privileges, the withholding of soap, and the removal of water basins used for ablution."