Dear Editor,
Any journalist with an ounce of common sense would have seen right away that the report of a Koran being flushed down a toilet wasn't accurate. A toothbrush or a turban, maybe. A prayer book with hard covers, impossible.
Never mind that the cages at Gauntanamo weren't outfitted with flush toilets anyway.
None of which changes the fact that desecration of their holy books and disrespect for their religion has been reported by the captives coming out of Guantanamo for months, if not years. And, quite frankly, I find reports of books being thrown into cages and "just happening" to land in the buckets used for waste more disturbing than the idea that a book was flushed. After all, such a conscious act at least recognizes the importance of what is being abused.
But the bigger question this incident raises is why a "faith-based" administration would countenance the use of another person's faith to harass, terrorize and abuse him?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/17/AR2005051701315_2.html
Yesterday, several former detainees said they witnessed military police and guards at Guantanamo Bay throwing their copies of the Koran on the ground, stomping on them with their feet, and tossing them into buckets and areas used as latrines.
Former detainee Abdallah Tabarak told a Moroccan newspaper in December that he saw guards throw Korans in the toilet, according to a BBC translation of the article.
"When I wanted to pray, they would burst into my cell with police dogs to terrorize me and prevent me from praying," he said. "They also would trample the Koran underfoot and throw it in the urine bucket. We staged protests in the prison about the desecrating of the Holy Koran, so the management promised us that they would issue orders to the American soldiers not to touch the copies of the Koran again."
The Pentagon issued those rules on Jan. 19, 2003, requiring that the Koran not be placed on "the floor, near the toilet or sink, near the feet, or dirty/wet areas."
Posted by Hannah at May 18, 2005 06:39 AM