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The
report sparked anti-US rallies worldwide. (Reuters)
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CAIRO,
May 16, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) – Although the Newsweek cast
some doubts on its earlier report about the desecration of the Noble
Qur’an in Guantanamo, neither the magazine nor the Pentagon denied
it outright, leaving the crucial question of whether the Muslims’
holy book was desecrated or not unanswered.
“Our
original source later said he couldn't be certain about reading of the
alleged Qur'an incident in the report we cited, and said it might have
been in other investigative documents or drafts,” wrote Newsweek Editor
Mark Whittaker in the magazine’s latest that hit newsstands Monday,
March 16.
In
its May 9 edition, the mass-circulation weekly said, quoting an “a
knowledgeable US government source”, that investigators probing
abuses at the US military prison in Cuba found that interrogators
“had placed Korans (sic) on toilets, and in at least one case
flushed a holy book down the toilet.”
Whittaker
said that a top Pentagon spokesman told the magazine on Friday, May
13, that a review of the probe cited in the story showed that it was
never meant to look into charges of Qur'an desecration.
The
spokesman, however, acknowledged that “the Pentagon had investigated
other desecration charges by detainees and found them ‘not
credible’”.
Whittaker
asserted that “top administration officials have promised to
continue looking into the charges”.
“Newsworthy”
Whittaker
did not backtrack on the original story or offered an apology as
international news agencies suggested.
He
said that before publishing the original report and for the sake of
accuracy, the Newsweek approached two separate Pentagon
officials for comment.
“One
declined to give us a response; the other challenged another aspect of
the story but did not dispute the Qur'an charge,” Whittaker
maintained.
“Although
other major news organizations had aired charges of Qur'an desecration
based only on the testimony of detainees, we believed our story was
newsworthy because a
US
official said government investigators turned up this evidence. So we
published the item,” he added.
In
its comment on the new Newsweek report, Agence France-Presse
(AFP) quoted Mark Falkoff, a lawyer for some
Guantanamo
inmates, as saying that a mass suicide attempt by 23 detainees in
August, 2003, was triggered by guard dropping and stamping on a
Qur’an.
Alarmed
Whitaker
said that his magazine was “alarmed” by numerous news accounts
blaming worldwide demonstrations last week, which left several people
dead, on their report.
“…we
regret that we got any part of our story wrong, and extend our
sympathies to victims of the violence and to the US soldiers caught in
its midst.”
The
report sparked angry and violent protests across the Muslim world from
Afghanistan
, where 16 were killed and more than 100 injured, to
Pakistan
,
Indonesia
and
Gaza
.
It
further drew ire from
Egypt
,
Saudi Arabia
,
Bangladesh
,
Malaysia
, the Arab League and a cohort of international Muslim organizations.
In
the face of the widespread protests, Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice branded any desecration of the Noble Qur’an as “abhorrent”
and promised that any offenders at
Guantanamo
would face “appropriate action.”
The
US
has been struggling to rebuild its image in the Muslim after divisions
caused by its 2003 invasion of
Iraq
and outrage over the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal.
But
the media credibility of the
US
government was shaken to its foundation after reports that it imposed
tight censorship on the coverage of its army activities in many
hotspots worldwide, mainly in
Iraq
and
Afghanistan
.
CNN's
chief news executive Eason
Jordan
quit on February 11 over remarks he made at the World Economic Forum
in Davos in January, in which he accused US forces of targeting
journalists in
Iraq
.
