FBI records cite prisoner claims of Quran abuse

updated 8:30 p.m. ET May 25, 2005

WASHINGTON - Terrorist suspects at the Guantanamo Bay prison told U.S. interrogators as early as April 2002, just four months after the first prisoners arrived, that military guards abused them and desecrated the Quran, declassified FBI records say.

“Their behavior is bad,” one prisoner is quoted as saying of his guards during an interrogation by an FBI special agent in July 2002. “About five months ago the guards beat the detainees. They flushed a Quran in the toilet.”

Lawrence Di Rita, chief spokesman for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, said Wednesday that U.S. military officials at Guantanamo Bay had recently found a separate record of the same allegation by the same man, and he was re-interviewed on May 14. “He did not corroborate his own allegation,” Di Rita said.

Asked why he felt certain that this prisoner did not affirm his allegation out of fear of retaliation, Di Rita said, “It’s a judgment call, and I trust the judgment of the commanders more than I trust the judgment of al-Qaida.”

The statements about guards disrespecting the Quran echo public allegations made many months later by some prisoners and their lawyers after prisoners’ release from Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. The once-secret FBI documents show a consistency to the allegations and are the first indication that Justice and Defense department officials were aware in early 2002 that detainees were accusing their guards of mistreating the holy book.

Amnesty decries ‘gulag of our time’
Separately on Wednesday, Amnesty International urged the United States to shut down the prison, calling it “the gulag of our time.” White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the human rights group’s complaints were “unsupported by the facts” and that allegations of mistreatment were being investigated.

In its annual report, Amnesty accused the United States of failing to live up to its responsibility to set the standard for human rights protections. Rather, the group said the United States has been the biggest disappointment “after evidence came to light that the U.S. administration had sanctioned interrogation techniques that violated the U.N. Convention against Torture.”

Some 540 men are being held at Guantanamo Bay on suspicion of links to Afghanistan’s ousted Taliban government or the al-Qaida terrorist network. Some have been jailed for more than three years without charge. The Defense Department argues that the imprisonment prevents these enemy combatants from fighting against the United States.

Pentagon: Abuse claims ‘not credible’
Di Rita said the charges of deliberate Quran desecration by U.S. military personnel were “fantastic” and “not credible on their face” because U.S. commanders were careful not to inflame passions among the prisoners.

“Commanders knew it was a very sensitive issue and they didn’t need the trouble,” the spokesman said.

Di Rita also said that the terrorist suspects held at Guantanamo Bay had been trained to make such false claims.

Indeed, the FBI records cite at least one instance in which a prisoner is said to have falsely claimed that a guard had dropped a Quran. “In actuality the detainee dropped the Quran and then blamed the guard. Many other detainees reacted to this claim,” the FBI document said, and that sparked an uprising “on or about 19-20 July 2002.”

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