Retraction of Quran desecration story, Guantanamo controversy continues
Regional-USA, Politics, 5/17/2005

Two Iranian newspapers of 'Jomhouri-Eslami' and 'Kayhan al-Arabi' on Monday condemned U.S. soldiers' desecration of the Holy Quran in Guantanamo Bay detention Camp, describing the acts as an insult to the Islam and to all divine religions.

The two papers stressed in their commentaries that America has taken events of Sept.11 as a pretext to create hostility with Islam and Muslims and to pass its plots and conspiracies into the region and the whole world.

The papers called upon the Islamic world to adopt the "necessary measures to face this hideous crime." This comes as Newsweek magazine, the publication that reported the story on the desecration of the Quran by US soldiers in Quantanamo, decided to retract its article yesterday, a day after it admited errors in the report but had refused to retract the article. Newsweek did not say that the acts did not happen.

Newsweek said "At NEWSWEEK, veteran investigative reporter Michael Isikoff's interest had been sparked by the release late last year of some internal FBI e-mails that painted a stark picture of prisoner abuse at Guant‡namo. Isikoff knew that military investigators at Southern Command (which runs the Guant‡namo prison) were looking into the allegations. So he called a longtime reliable source, a senior U.S. government official who was knowledgeable about the matter. The source told Isikoff that the report would include new details that were not in the FBI e-mails, including mention of flushing the Qur'an down a toilet. A SouthCom spokesman contacted by Isikoff declined to comment on an ongoing investigation, but NEWSWEEK National Security Correspondent John Barry, realizing the sensitivity of the story, provided a draft of the NEWSWEEK PERISCOPE item to a senior Defense official, asking, "Is this accurate or not?" The official challenged one aspect of the story: the suggestion that Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, sent to Gitmo by the Pentagon in 2001 to oversee prisoner interrogation, might be held accountable for the abuses. Not true, said the official (the PERISCOPE draft was corrected to reflect that). But he was silent about the rest of the item. The official had not meant to mislead, but lacked detailed knowledge of the SouthCom report."

Air Force General Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters on Capitol Hill May 16 that 25,000 documents have been reviewed "and there's no indication that anything like that happened." It is not clear if such an incident took place that would be included in official records. However, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said Newsweek's report about the alleged desecration of the Quran "is demonstrably false and there have thus far been no credible allegations" of such an act.

The White House made the assertion that the report caused the death of many, who where involved in protests overseas, adding "the image of the United States abroad has been damaged."

The Newsweek report comes following shocking acts and abuses by US soldiers against detainee prisoners that were uncovered recently in Iraq and other places.

The human rights organization Amnesty International says that: The USA disregards basic human rights and international legal obligations in its "war on terror." Serious violations are the inevitable result. Not a single detainee held in Guantanamo Bay has had the lawfulness of his detention judicially reviewed. The conditions remain in place for torture and ill-treatment in the US Naval Base and beyond.

The Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO) has strongly denounced the "profanation of the holy Quran by American forces" in Guantanamo prison and in some Iraqi regions "where copies of the holy Quran have recently been found with crosses drawn on them." ISESCO holds the American administration responsible of the acts of its soldiers because "they ran counter the principles of international law, the spirit of the American constitution and moral and human values." ISESCO's release came after Newsweek magazine reported in its May 9th issue that U.S. military investigators found that American interrogators at the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay had flushed a copy of the Quran down a toilet.

Last week, Amnesty International reported that: "A year after the Abu Ghraib torture scandal broke, the conditions remain in place for torture and ill-treatment in US custody to occur. While the US government is pursuing a public relations exercise to persuade the world that what the Abu Ghraib photographs revealed was a small problem that has now been fixed, thousands of detainees in US custody in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, and secret locations elsewhere remain at risk of torture or ill-treatment. This is because of the USA's continuing pick and choose approach to international law and standards, and the systematic use of incommunicado detention and denial of judicial review, a basic safeguard against arbitrary detention, torture and "disappearance."

Amnesty International added: More than a year after the United States Supreme Court ruled that the US courts have the jurisdiction to consider appeals from the detainees held in the US Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, not a single detainee held there has had the lawfulness of his detention judicially reviewed. The report describes how the US administration is continuing to seek to block such review every step of the way, or at least to keep it as far from a judicial process as possible.

Previous Stories:
  Desecration of the holy Quran by US soldiers is severely condemned   (5/16/2005)
  Desecration of scripture of God in Guantanamo base denounced   (5/13/2005)
  On US efforts to control money flows to designated 'terrorist' organizations   (5/5/2005)
  War on terrorism requires advance of freedom, Bush says   (3/9/2005)
  Defense lashes out at US treatment of Moroccan former Guantanamo detainees   (2/9/2005)
  Too many mistakes are being committed during the global war against terrorism, al-Shara   (9/28/2004)
  US: No Policy of abuse at Abu Ghraib; direct responsibility up to the brigade level   (8/26/2004)
  US Supreme Court rules on detention of enemy combatants   (6/29/2004)
  Bush likens war on terror to World War Two, Cold War   (6/3/2004)
  New York Times: White House strips those accused of terrorism of any due process   (10/11/2003)
  US court decision on terror detainees sets 'dangerous precedent', UN rights expert   (3/13/2003)
  Annan:'collateral damage' of war terrorism on human rights   (1/21/2003)

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