By THOM SHANKER Published: May 27, 2005 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/27/politics/27koran.html WASHINGTON, May 26 - An American military inquiry has uncovered five instances in which guards or interrogators at the Guantánamo Bay detention facility in Cuba mishandled the Koran, but found "no credible evidence" to substantiate claims that it was ever flushed down a toilet, the chief of the investigation said on Thursday. All but one of the five incidents appear to have taken place before January 2003. In three cases, the mishandling of the Koran appears to have been deliberate, and in two it was accidental or unintentional, the commander said, adding that four cases involved guards, and one an interrogator. Two service members have been punished for their conduct, one recently. In announcing preliminary findings of his investigation, which began about two weeks ago, Brig. Gen. Jay W. Hood, commander of the Guantánamo Joint Task Force, said the Koran mishandling did not occur as part of any effort to demoralize or intimidate detainees for interrogation. But General Hood declined to give further details until he had completed the investigation, which was started after Newsweek magazine published an article asserting that a separate investigation by the military was expected to find that a Koran had been flushed down a toilet at the detention center. The article, which the magazine subsequently retracted, prompted violence in the Muslim world that claimed at least 17 lives. "I'd like you to know that we have found no credible evidence that a member of the Joint Task Force at Guantánamo Bay ever flushed a Koran down a toilet," General Hood said in a Pentagon news briefing. He said that his investigators conducted a new interview with one detainee who had been quoted in F.B.I. documents that were released Wednesday as having said under interrogation in 2002 that guards flushed a Koran down a toilet. In the new interview, conducted on May 14 as part of General Hood's investigation, the detainee said he was not a witness to any Koran abuse. General Hood said his investigators asked the detainee whether he personally had seen any incidents of Koran abuse, "and he allowed as how he hadn't, but he had heard guards - that guards at some other point in time had done this." The general said he could offer no explanation for any contradiction between the detainee's statements to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in July 2002 and the interview conducted by his team on May 14. |