Cageprisoners is today publishing a compendium of statements from former detainees of Guantanamo Bay regarding the United States Government's systematic, institutionalised and intentful desecration of the Qur'an and other religious abuses and manipulations to degrade and humiliate the detainees.
The report, which is a damningly detailed cross-corroborated litany of abuses of the Qur'an by US forces, demolishes the farcical denial by the United States that the desecration of the Qur'an by the US military and their associated agencies was neither an intentful nor systematic method devised by the US command chain to purposefully torment the detainees.
Included is exclusive new material from former UK based detainees Moazzam Begg, Feroz Abbassi and Jamal al-Harith on the abuses they witnessed first hand and those reported to them second hand.
This is Feroz's first public statement on the abuses he suffered and witnessed under his detention and refers exclusively to the religious abuses meted out by the US authorities
The reports details how the US forces systematically in numerous different incidents, throughout the entire lengths of their detention up till their release, variously:
. stamped on the Qur'an,
. placed the Qur'an in buckets and faeces and urine,
. sat on the Qur'an,
. shredded the Qur'an in interrogations,
. dropped and threw it on the floor,
. belittled the Qur'an calling it a guide on 'how to kill Americans'and
. mistranslated the copies they gave to Prisoners
all in their bid to break the will of the detainees used it as a means tomaliciously abuse and mentally damage the prisoners.
Also reported is
. Proselytisation attempts to Christianity by the US Military forces including distribution of Bibles.
. Systematic and endemic derision and abuse of Islamic religious rituals and supplications such as
o Mocking and deriding the Adhaan (the call to Prayer),
o Forced shaving of the beard (which many Muslim's hold as obligatory),
o Withholding food during Ramadhan (the month of Fasting from Dawn to Dusk)
o Prohibition of Qur'ranic recitation
o Prohibition of congregational prayer.
Feroz states that a US interpreter of Lebanese Maronite origin repeatedly slapped and physically degraded the Qur'an whilst calling it 'Shit', how copies of the Qur'an were placed in 'Shit' buckets by US forces and details how the interrogators used the Qur'an as a tool to humiliate and abuse the detainees.
Moazzam Begg corroborates Feroz's account and exposes the duplicity of the US Spokesman Richard Boucher's statement that the detainees were given the Qur'an and the opportunity to worship. Detailing a raft of examples of religious abuses by US military personnel.
Jamal Al Harith confirms that 'the US has desecrated the Quran on a number of occasions.' Detailing 'the reason for the first hunger strike in Camp X-ray, which involved about 75% of the detainees was over a guard who kicked the Quran onto the floor from its perch hanging on the side of the cage. Numerous hunger strikes in Camp Delta were over another guard who threw it into the toilet. When searching our cages the guards would sometimes throw the Quran onto the floor. During interrogation, an interrogator jumped up and down on the Quran and taunted a prisoner. In Afghanistan, in the American concentration camps, a Quran was thrown in a waste bucket by a guard.... '
Tarek Dergoul describes the modus operandi of the interrogators which consisted of 'swearing at Allah, swearing at the Prophet and the Qur'an .and mocking [it]' and how Military Police wrote obscentities in copies of the Qur'an scrawling 'F*** off, F*** you' in them.
Mohammes Mazouz states: 'The Americans went [through procedures] to humiliate us and flout our most elementary principles. It concerns the treatment inflicted to the Quran. Anything that could reduce it to nothing was used. They urinated over it, they ripped it; they cut it with scissors in front of us. They defecated on it and painted our faces with it. Yes, all this should be said so that the Muslim world understands which degree of hate this sacred Book inspires in them.'
Cageprisoner's spokesman Dr Adnan Siddiqui states 'It should be clear to any thinking person that all these detainees could not have colluded, especially since some were in solitary confinement for their duration in Guantanamo Bay; and the US is guilty of a systematic and horrific assault on Islam and the religious beliefs and practices of a fifth of Humanity in their so-called 'war on terror. The prolonged period of the abuse from the beginning to the end of their detention clearly shows that it is institutionalised and authorised by the chain of command headed by Donald Rumsfeld and George W.Bush.'
The report can be downloaded from http://www.cageprisoners.com/downloads/USQuranDesecration.pdf