Guantanamo Should Be Closed

Senator urges Guantánamo closure after Pentagon admits Qur'an abuse

Dan Glaister in Los Angeles
Monday June 6, 2005, The Guardian

A leading Democrat called for Guantánamo Bay to be shut down yesterday after the US army admitted at the weekend that it had uncovered instances of desecration of the Qur'an at the prison camp.

The admission came almost a month after authorities criticised Newsweek magazine for a report that interrogators at Guantánamo Bay had flushed a Qur'an down a toilet.

The Pentagon report, released late on Friday, by Brigadier General Jay Hood detailed five cases of desecration at Guantánamo, including the Qur'an being kicked, stepped on, splashed with urine and soaked in water by guards.

But Gen Hood said he had not found any proof that a copy of the Qur'an was flushed down a toilet. The White House said at the time of the Newsweek report that it contributed to riots that led to the deaths of 16 people in Afghanistan.

"Mishandling of a Qur'an here is never condoned," said Gen Hood. "When one considers the many thousands of times detainees have been moved and cells have been searched ... I think one can only conclude that respect for detainee religious beliefs was embedded in the culture of [the taskforce] from the start."

He also said he had found 15 cases of desecration of the Qur'an by inmates.

"These included using a Qur'an as a pillow, ripping pages out of the Qur'an, attempting to flush a Qur'an down the toilet and urinating on the Qur'an," the report said.

The White House reacted bullishly to the Pentagon's disclosures. Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, said: "Our men and women in the military adhere to the highest standards, including when it comes to respecting and protecting religious freedom." But Senator Joseph Biden, the leading Democrat on the Senate's foreign relations committee, said yesterday that Guantánamo was an embarrassment and should be shut.

"This has become the greatest propaganda tool that exists for recruiting of terrorists around the world," he told ABC television.

"It is unnecessary to be in that position. The end result is, I think we should end up shutting it down, moving those prisoners.

"Those that we have reason to keep, keep. And those we don't, let go."

The US holds about 540 detainees at the camp in Cuba. In one of the five cases detailed in the Hood report, a guard went outside a cell block and urinated near an air vent. A detainee complained that the urine "splashed on him and his Qur'an while he laid near the air vent," the report said. The guard was reassigned.

In another incident an interrogator stepped on a Qur'an and then apologised to the detainee. The private contract interrogator "was later terminated for a pattern of unacceptable behaviour, an inability to follow direct guidance and poor leadership," the report said.

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