lizard
Member
I wasn't pointing out friction between the parties, I was pointing out how the Right is pretending this story never existed until the evil liberal newsweek published it.deadair said:
examples of how this story and variations of it have been circulating for months:
Scotty McClellan:
"It's puzzling that while Newsweek now acknowledges that they got the facts wrong, they refused to retract the story," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. "I think there's a certain journalistic standard that should be met and in this instance it was not." "The report has had serious consequences," McClellan said. "People have lost their lives. The image of the United States abroad has been damaged."
August 5, 2004
The Independent (London)
In the report, released in New York, Asif Iqbal, Rhuhel Ahmed and Shafiq Rasul - the so-called Tipton Three - said one inmate was threatened after being shown a video in which hooded inmates were forced to sodomise each other. Guards allegedly threw prisoners' Korans into toilets, while others were injected with drugs, it was claimed.
August 5, 2004
Daily News (New York) | Byline: By James Gordon Meek and Derek Rose.
They say that rats and scorpions had free run of their sweltering cages, loud rock music was used to drown out the sound of prayers, and sleep deprivation was common.
"They would kick the Koran, throw it into the toilet and generally disrespect it," Asif Iqbal wrote.
[...]
Pentagon spokesman Michael Shavers said the military "operates a professional detention facility at Guantanamo" and does not condone abuse of detainees.
January 9, 2005
Sunday | FINAL EDITION | HEADLINE: Nightmare of Guantanamo.... U.S. prison camp in Cuba has become legal black hole, reporter says BYLINE: John Freeman Special to The Denver Post
"They pepper sprayed me in the face, and I started vomiting; in all I must have brought up five cupfuls. They pinned me down and attacked me, poking their fingers in my eyes, and forced my head into the toilet pan and flushed. They tied me up like a beast and then they were kneeling on me, kicking and punching. Finally they dragged me out of my cell in chains ... and shaved my beard, my hair, my eyebrows."
[...]
And earlier this year, that process finally began. In March, the government released five British men from Guantanamo after nearly three years. They had been captured in Afghanistan, where they had gone to offer humanitarian aid. Rose interviewed them that same month, two months before the allegations of Abu Ghraib first surfaced, and yet they described a period of captivity eerily similar to that of the Iraqis in Abu Ghraib.
In August Mr Ahmed, Mr Rasul and Mr Iqbal issued a 115-page dossier accusing the US of abuse, including allegations that they were beaten and had their Korans thrown into toilets.*
(*Also published in The Hartford Courant (Connecticut), January 16, 2005.)
January 9, 2003
The New York Times | Late Edition - Final | SECTION: Section A; Column 2; Foreign Desk; Pg. 14 | THREATS AND RESPONSES: TERROR; Hate of the West Finds Fertile Soil in Yemen. But Does Al Qaeda? By Ian Fisher | DATELINE: SANA, Yemen, Jan. 8
Investigators know the basic facts: In this poor and isolated nation with no lack of extremists, a young preacher named Ahmed Ali Jarallah assembled a small cell of militants to strike the enemies of Islam in Yemen. Two years ago, he read off a hate list in a speech at a mosque here, singling out specifically a hospital run by American Baptists.
"In Jibla, there is the Baptist hospital, which is the source of Christian activities in the province," Mr. Jarallah said. Muslims converted to Christianity at this hospital, he charged, and even "stuff the Holy Koran into toilets of mosques."
On Dec. 28, anger went into action: Mr. Jarallah himself assassinated a leading secular politician, Jarallah Omar, according to the police. Two days later, one of Mr. Jarallah's followers, Abed Abdel Razzak Kamel, is said to have killed three Americans in the hospital, which provided medical care in the southern town of Jibla for 35 years.
March 26, 2003
The Washington Post | Final Edition | SECTION: A SECTION; Pg. A12 HEADLINE: Returning Afghans Talk of Guantanamo; Out of Legal Limbo, Some Tell of Mistreatment | BYLINE: Marc Kaufman and April Witt, Washington Post Staff Writers
The men, the largest single group of Afghans to be released after months of detainment at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, gave varying accounts of how American forces treated them during interrogation and detainment. Some displayed medical records showing extensive care by American military doctors, while others complained that American soldiers insulted Islam by sitting on the Koran or dumping their sacred text into a toilet to taunt them.
[...]
Ehsannullah, 29, said American soldiers who initially questioned him in Kandahar before shipping him to Guantanamo hit him and taunted him by dumping the Koran in a toilet.
August 4, 2004
CNN.com | SECTION: LAW | HEADLINE: British men report abuse from Guantanamo BYLINE: By Jonathan Wald CNN
DATELINE: NEW YORK
U.S. soldiers "would kick the Koran, throw it into the toilet, and generally disrespect it," Iqbal said.
June 28, 2004
Financial Times Information | Global News Wire - Asia Africa Intelligence Wire | InfoProd | Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
One of the men, Timur Ishmuratov of Tatarstan, told ORT on 24 June -- prior to the release -- that he had been captured by Northern Alliance forces shortly after the beginning of the U.S. military action in Afghanistan and "sold" to the Americans for $ 3,000-$ 5,000. Former prisoner Airat Vakhitov told ORT about alleged mistreatment while he was at Guantanamo. "They tore the Koran to pieces in front of us, threw it into the toilet," Vakhitov said. "When people were praying, they forced their way in and put their feet on people's heads and beat them."
