“Yes the U.S. soldiers tear up the Qur’an in Guantanamo”

Media reports, specially a story that was ran by the NEWSWEEK last year about the desecration of the Qur’an at GUANTANAMO sparked outrage and uproar among the Muslim countries and Muslim communities worldwide. It was worse than ABU GHRAIB scandal involving torturing and abusing Iraqi detainees at the hands of the U.S. occupation troops.

The abuse scandal was a physical and psychological torture of a few Muslims, whereas the Qur’an desecration came as a spiritual, emotional and psychological torture of Muslims all over the world.

True that the NEWSWEEK magazine backed away from the report detailing how the U.S. interrogators desecrated copies of the holy Qur’an at the GUANTANAMO Bay naval base, blamed for sparking fierce demonstrations and protests in Afghanistan and throughout the Muslim countries, numerous analysts explained that this was a cover up and another American attempt to eschew accountability.

Also some of the detainees who had been released from the U.S. naval base at GUANTANAMO affirmed that American interrogators did desecrate the Qur’an and that in some incidents they flushed it into the toilet and sometimes they tore up its pages to break the detainees and force them to speak.

Recently Der Spiegel had an interview with Nadja Dizdarevic, 31, a Bosnian Muslim, representing Guantanamo detainees at Amnesty International, a human rights group. Nadja is the wife of one of the ex-GUANTANAMO detainees, Boudella al-Hajj, who was captured by the U.S. in 2002 for allegedly planning attacks on the British and U.S. embassies in Sarajevo.

Amnesty, who has branded the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay a human rights failure; calling it "the gulag of our time" plans to release testimony by eight former GITMO detainees detailing scandalous conditions at the U.S. detention center.

Al Hajj and five other Bosnians of Algerian descent where acquitted of terror charges by a Bosnian court in 2002 due to lack of evidence, Dizdarevic said, adding that the Bosnian security forces later handed the group over to masked men who placed hoods on their heads- Dizdarevic suggests that they were CIA agents. Five days later the detainees arrived in Guantanamo.

Dizdarevic said that American lawyers representing her husband and the group were able to meet the detainees a few times, during which the men weren’t able to say much openly because their visitors' rights will be withdrawn if they do.



Those who complain to their lawyers regarding the harsh conditions at the camp face punishment.

”It's the same scenes we know from IRAQ or AFGHANISTAN. Dogs are laid on the bodies of naked prisoners, an unimaginable humiliation for devout Muslims. At night they are exposed to bright light or deafening music. The guards herd the prisoners into a hangar where the temperature is below freezing and straight after that put them into a room as hot as a sauna. Beatings are mainly aimed at the genitals and all this is filmed with video cameras. The favourite toy of the guards is the Qur’an; they throw copies of it into toilets or tear them up," Der Spiegel quoted Dizdarevic as saying.

Dizdarevic also referred to what’s been described in news reports as underground interrogation cells like those in Turkey, She added that in Camp Iguana, another section of GUANTANAMO camp; U.S. soldiers hold young people aged 10 to 16, and that they’re often beaten.

The U.S. holds about 500 suspects in GUANTANAMO from about 40 countries. So far about 200 detainees have been released, though some have been jailed in their countries; and many have been held for three years without charge.