U.S. Confirms Some Quran Abuse

(CBS/AP)  Investigators have confirmed five cases in which military personnel mishandled the Qurans of Muslim prisoners at Guantanamo Bay since 2002, but they have found no "credible evidence" that a holy book was flushed in a toilet.

The investigation also found 15 incidents in which detainees mishandled or inappropriately treated the Quran, including one case of a detainee ripping pages from his holy book, Brig. Gen. Jay W. Hood, the Guantanamo Bay prison commander who led the investigation, told reporters Thursday.

Meanwhile, Muslims from Dhaka to Jakarta rallied Friday to protest the alleged desecration of Islam's holy book by burning U.S. flags and throwing tomatoes at a likeness of President Bush.

More than 15,000 people took to the streets of Pakistan's largest cities. Thousands more rallied in Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia and Kashmir, where police fired teargas and used batons to disperse a crowd of several hundred.

Hood emphasized that his probe is not yet complete. It was launched about two weeks ago in response to a Newsweek magazine story that said U.S. officials had confirmed a Quran was flushed in a toilet. The story stirred worldwide controversy and the Bush administration blamed it for deadly demonstrations in Afghanistan.

Newsweek later retracted its report.

Hood, who has commanded the U.S. naval prison compound in Cuba since March 2004, told a Pentagon news conference that a prisoner who was reported to have complained to an FBI agent in 2002 that a military guard threw a Quran in the toilet has since told Hood's investigators that he never witnessed any form of Quran desecration.

The unidentified prisoner, re-interviewed at Guantanamo on May 14, said he had heard talk of guards mishandling religious articles but did not witness any such acts, Hood said. The prisoner also stated that he personally had not been mistreated but that he had heard fellow inmates talk of being beaten or otherwise mistreated.

The general said he could not speculate on why the prisoner did not repeat his earlier statement about a guard flushing a Quran in a toilet. The statement was contained in an Aug. 1, 2002, FBI summary of an FBI agent's July 22, 2002, interrogation of the prisoner. A partly redacted version of the summary was made public this week.

"He heard that guards at some other point in time had done this," Hood said, adding that this allegation from the 2002 FBI report was the only one Hood found that involved a toilet.

Other prisoners who were returned to their home countries after serving time at Guantanamo Bay as terror suspects have alleged Quran desecration by U.S. guards, and some have said a Quran was placed in a toilet.

"I'd like you to know that we have found no credible evidence that a member of the Joint Task Force at Guantanamo Bay ever flushed a Quran down a toilet," Hood said. "We did identify 13 incidents of alleged mishandling of the Quran by Joint Task Force personnel. Ten of those were by a guard and three by interrogators."

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