The source is no longer sure that he read accounts of Qur’anic desecration in the Southern Command report. But he still remembers reading about Qur’anic desecration. It would be interesting to know whether the source read those ‘investigative reports’ in other official government documents, or in the variety of newspapers and magazines that have reported on this issue since 2002.

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.

He also claimed his firm tried to provide their clients with books on Tafsîr. Tafsîr, or ‘exegesis’, of the Qur'ân is considered the most important ‘science’ for Muslims.

The government refused, without explanation, to allow books on Tafsîr. I asked Ms. Foster about this and she told me, “As a general matter it has been extremely difficult to get them reading materials, particularly in their own language.”

The D.C. lawyer also alleged that one of the Administrative Review Board’s criteria for deeming a detainee too dangerous to release was whether or not they prayed in their cell. You pray, you stay.

[As an aside, he also mentioned that "excessive anti-Bush sentiments" were considered grounds for denying release.]

Asked about this, Ms. Foster was so skeptical about the ARB’s that she questioned whether they use “any rational criteria at all.”

Taking all of this into consideration, how should we view Newsweek and their anonymous source? How should we view the rhetoric coming from the Pentagon and the right-wing blogosphere?

Why would they say this?

Because on May 6th, Pakistan’s equivalent of Michael Jordan, star cricket player Imran Khan, held a press conference:

Imran Khan was incensed that America has been desecrating the Qur’an. The Newsweek piece was confirmation. The government was admitting what had long been alleged. Riots ensued. People were killed. President Pervez Musharraf and his prime minister, Shaukat Aziz, demanded an investigation. Saudi Arabia expressed concern. Yemen denounced us. The Organization of the Islamic Conference complained. The Arab League demanded an apology. Demonstrations broke out in Palestine, Indonesia, and elsewhere. The sudden fury of Muslims surprised Washington.

Dr. Rice’s reaction is probably more telling than she intended:

Mr. Rumsfeld’s reaction is just chilling:

To Dr. Rice I say, “What’s appalling is that this story is out there to tell.” To Mr Rumsfeld I say, “I am fully aware that what I say may wind up causing the deaths of angry protestors, damaging national security, endangering our troops, and destabilizing the governments of U.S. allies. But this is your fault.”

I have weighed long and hard whether I should write this article. I know that providing evidence that the U.S. Government and the mainstream media are engaged in a dishonest effort at damage control is going to undermine our ability to put a lid on Muslim outrage. But the truth is already out there.

This effort to put our mistreatment of Muslims and our disrespect for Islam back in Pandora’s Box is not going to work. Any short-term damage the truth will do, will be overwhelmed by the long-term damage of allowing this abuse and disrespect to continue.

The world needs to know that most Americans, and certainly the vast majority of people on the left, do not support these policies. We don’t care whether the government is ready to admit the truth and accept the consequences. We are speaking out.

The Bush administration has lost all its credibility. They lost it by lying about the threat presented by Saddam Hussein. They lost it by fabricating evidence about weapons of mass destruction. They lost it by cynically pretending to be interested in a diplomatic solution to Iraq’s non-compliance with U.N. resolutions, when the Downing Street Minutes show the administration was bent on war from the beginning. They lost it at Abu Ghraib. They lost it by stating that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to prisoners at Guantanamo. They lost it by farming torture out to our sworn enemy, Syria, and the human rights nadir of Uzbekistan.

No amount of spin is going to repair the damage done to America’s image and legacy. Only the resignation of the entire administration could even begin to accomplish that task.

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Below is a comprehensive list of published allegations of Qur'anic desecration that pre-date the Newsweek article with the exception of citations 1, 10, and 11:

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1. The New York Times, May 17, 2005, "Newsweek Says It Is Retracting Koran Report":

2. From Carl Conetta, Project on Defense Alternatives, by e-mail:

3. From Carl Conetta, Project on Defense Alternatives, by e-mail:

4. Tarek Derghoul, another of the British detainees, similarly cites instances of Koran desecration in an interview with Cageprisoners.com.

5. Desecration of the Koran was also mentioned by former Guantanamo detainee Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost and reported by the BBC in early May 2005. (Haroon Rashid, "Ex-inmates share Guantanamo ordeal," 2 May 2005).

6. "Lawyers allege abuse of 12 at Guantanamo," The Philadelphia Inquirer, Jan. 20, 2005: Some detainees complained of religious humiliation, saying guards had defaced their copies of the Koran and, in one case, had thrown it in a toilet, said Kristine Huskey [an attorney in Washington, D.C.], who interviewed clients late last month. Others said that pills were hidden in their food and that people came to their cells claiming to be their attorneys, to gain information.

7. From the Center for Constitutional Rights, New York City, NY and linked as a footnote in a Human Rights Watch report:

8. From the Center for Constitutional Rights, New York City, NY and linked as a footnote in a Human Rights Watch report:

9. From the Center for Constitutional Rights, New York City, NY and linked as a footnote in a Human Rights Watch report:

10. The Los Angeles Times, May 16, 2005, "Newsweek Says It Is Retracting Koran Report":

11. Raw Story, May 16, 2005, "Newsweek report on Quran matches many earlier accounts":

12. From the Complaint, Rasul v. Rumsfeld, filed October 27, 2004:

13. Corrente.blogspot.com provides numerous press citations, without links, of the use of desecration of the Koran to humiliate prisoners. For example, Corrente cites "BBC Monitoring International Reports, June 26, 2004, RUSSIAN TV INTERVIEWS FREED GUANTANAMO PRISONERS... bucket instead of a toilet. People were in cells, ... ... floor. (Vahitov) They tore the Koran to pieces in front of us, threw it into the toilet."