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Koran flushing not confirmed
Senior Defense Department officials yesterday said there is no evidence corroborating a news report that interrogators flushed a Koran down a toilet to intimidate Muslim prisoners held at U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that in an unconfirmed incident, a Guantanamo prisoner flushed pages from a Koran down a toilet in an attempt to clog it.Newsweek magazine reported May 9 that U.S. interrogators at the prison had desecrated the Muslim holy book. The report was blamed for prompting a series of violent demonstrations this week in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the homelands of many of the more than 500 men held at Guantanamo. Gen. Myers told reporters in Washington that Army Gen. Bantz J. Craddock, the head of U.S. Southern Command, has been in Guantanamo for the last couple of days digging into this issue to see if there was a time when the Koran was not respected. They have looked through the logs, the interrogation logs, and they cannot confirm yet that there was ever the case of the toilet incident, Gen. Myers said. He did note a log entry, which they still have to confirm, where a detainee was reported by a guard to be ripping pages out of a Koran and putting them in a toilet to stop it up as a protest, he said. But not where the U.S. did it. Rest at link. What is not in dispute is that a few years ago Arab terrorists, while running from Israelis, took hostages in Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity and used one of the Holiest Churches in Christiandom as their toilet for 39 days. http://www.jcpa.org/jl/vp490.htm On April 24, the Jerusalem Post reported on the damage that the PA forces were causing: Three Armenian monks, who had been held hostage by the Palestinian gunmen inside Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, managed to flee the church area via a side gate yesterday morning. They immediately thanked the soldiers for rescuing them. They told army officers the gunmen had stolen gold and other property, including crucifixes and prayer books, and had caused damage.... One of the monks, Narkiss Korasian, later told reporters: "They stole everything, they opened the doors one by one and stole everything....They stole our prayer books and four crosses...they didn't leave anything. Thank you for your help, we will never forget it." Israeli officials said the monks said the gunmen had also begun beating and attacking clergymen. When the siege finally ended, the PA soldiers left the church in terrible condition: The Palestinian gunmen holed up in the Church of the Nativity seized church stockpiles of food and "ate like greedy monsters" until the food ran out, while more than 150 civilians went hungry. They also guzzled beer, wine, and Johnnie Walker scotch that they found in priests' quarters, undeterred by the Islamic ban on drinking alcohol. The indulgence lasted for about two weeks into the 39-day siege, when the food and drink ran out, according to an account by four Greek Orthodox priests who were trapped inside for the entire ordeal.... The Orthodox priests and a number of civilians have said the gunmen created a regime of fear. Even in the Roman Catholic areas of the complex there was evidence of disregard for religious norms. Catholic priests said that some Bibles were torn up for toilet paper, and many valuable sacramental objects were removed. "Palestinians took candelabra, icons and anything that looked like gold," said a Franciscan, the Rev. Nicholas Marquez from Mexico. Posted by: ed 2005-05-13 |
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