Desecration of Koran Had Been Reported Before

Several lawyers for Guantanamo Bay detainees contended yesterday that other forms of alleged mistreatment of detainees, some reported in e-mails by FBI personnel stationed at Guantanamo Bay, have helped fuel anti-American sentiment in Arab countries. They accused the White House of being disingenuous about the insults it has already acknowledged occurred at the base.

The government has acknowledged that two female interrogators have been reprimanded, one for making sexually suggestive remarks to a detainee, and the other for smearing fake menstrual blood on a captive. Detainee lawyers said the purpose of the tactics was to cause stress based on the prisoners' religious beliefs that they would be unclean and could not pray.

FBI allegations of harsh treatment of captives are under investigation by the Pentagon.

"It's a measure of how deeply our global credibility has suffered that this inflammatory allegation was given immediate credence," said Joseph Margulies, an attorney for former detainee Mamdouh Habib. "You are only prepared to believe this if the U.S. reputation has fallen so badly. If you learned that a female interrogator smeared fake menstrual blood on a detainee, as we did learn, then, of course, you're going to believe that they could throw a Koran in a toilet." Dozens of detainees have said in declassified court records that Guantanamo Bay detention officials and military guards engaged in widespread religious and sexual humiliation of detainees. Detainees said the goal was to make them feel impure, shake their faith and try to gain information.

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."

Researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.