Handling the Koran

Guantánamo Bay, Cuba

The Pentagon last week acknowledged five cases of “mishandling” of the Koran by prison guards at Guantánamo Bay, but said there was “no credible evidence” that anyone ever put the Muslim holy book in a toilet. A terrorism suspect at Guantánamo made the charge to the FBI in 2002, but the Pentagon said the worst it found was that several guards put copies of the Koran on the floor or otherwise handled them inappropriately. Sixteen people were killed in riots in Afghanistan after Newsweek reported last month that the military had confirmed that a guard had flushed a Koran down a toilet. The magazine has since retracted the article.