I was alerted via e-mail by several people that — lo and behold — the FBI had now weighed in in the fake Koran flushing incident (previous GetReligion items here and here) in favor of claims that the flushing had, in fact, occurred.
Here’s the Washington Post story from today, and all I can say is better luck next time, guys. According to the Post (emphases added),
Nearly a dozen detainees at the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba told FBI interrogators that guards had mistreated copies of the Koran, including one who said in 2002 that guards “flushed a Koran in the toilet,” according to new FBI documents released today.
… Nearly all of the hundreds of pages of documents consist of FBI summaries of detainee interrogations, and therefore do not generally provide corroboration of the allegations. At least two detainees also conceded that they had not personally witnessed mistreatment of the Koran but had heard about incidents from other inmates, the records show.
I’m willing to believe that a Koran — or pages of a Koran, at any rate — were indeed flushed down a toilet as part of U.S. interrogations of prisoners. But I am not willing to believe this wholly on the prisoners’ say-so.
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Comments (3) |
May 26, 2005, at 3:42 am
So why are you so ready to call it “the fake Koran flushing incident”?
May 26, 2005, at 8:35 am
Because … there hasn’t been any solid proof that it really did happen. Hearsay isn’t proof that would hold up in court, ya know.
May 26, 2005, at 11:06 am
Well, there’s never likely to be any “solid proof” either way, unless the story is true and some of the guards report it in the future. So we don’t know if the story is fake or not - although I happen to think it’s probable, based on abuses reported elsewhere. And since we’re not “in court”, what might or might not “hold up” there is hardly relevant.