Romero said the Bush administration "continues to turn a blind eye to mounting evidence of widespread abuse of detainees held in its custody."

WASHINGTON, May 26, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Declassified FBI documents show that several Muslim detainees at Guantanamo have complained that American guards repeatedly abused the Noble Qur'an.

"About five months ago the guards beat the detainees. They flushed a Qur'an in the toilet," one detainee said in July 2002, according to summaries of FBI interviews with detainees prison in 2002 and 2003, The Guardian reported on Thursday, May 26.

"The guards dance around when the detainees are trying to pray. The guards still do these things."

The FBI documents were released on Wednesday, May 25, and obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) under the freedom of information act.

"Unfortunately, one thing we've learned over the last couple of years is that detainee statements about their treatment at Guantanamo and other detention centers sometimes have turned out to be more credible than US government statements," ACLU lawyer Jameel Jaffer told Reuters.

The documents echoed a recent Newsweek report on the desecration of the Noble Qur'an and indicate that American military authorities were made aware of the charges as early as the summer of 2002, three months after the camp opened.

In its May 9 edition, the mass-circulation Newsweek quoted “a knowledgeable US government source” as saying that investigators probing abuses at Guantanamo found that US interrogators “had placed Korans on toilets, and in at least one case flushed a holy book down the toilet.”

The report sparked angry and violent protests across the Muslim world from Afghanistan, where 16 were killed and more than 100 injured, to Gaza.

After protests from the Pentagon, the weekly cast some doubts on the story in its May 23 edition, saying the source “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”.

Anthony Romero, the ACLU's director, accused the Bush administration of continuing "to turn a blind eye to mounting evidence of widespread abuse of detainees held in its custody."

Another FBI summary interview dated July 30, 2002, said an uprising started at detention camp earlier that month when a detainee accused a US jailer of dropping his copy of the Noble Qur'an.

One detainee told an FBI agent that "he had heard a detainee had been severely beaten by a guard and had died. (The detainee said) he heard the altercation between the detainee and the guards began when the guards disrespected the Qur'an," according to a summary dated January 21, 2003.

Another detainee said in a summary, dated February 4, 2003, that guards "often disgrace the Koran by throwing it on the cell floor and frequently use profanity which many of the detainees find extremely offensive".

In an interview on March 6, 2004, a detainee charged that military police "have been mistreating the detainees by pushing them around and throwing their waste bucket to them in the cell, sometimes with waste still in the bucket, and kicking the Qur'an."

The declassified FBI interview summaries also contained a litany of detainees' complaints that they were beaten by guards, sexually molested by female interrogators, shown pornographic images and had their heads and beards shaved as punishment.

A detainee told an FBI agent in April 2003 he was forced to stand naked in front of a female interrogator.

"While the guards held him, she removed her blouse, embraced the detainee from behind and put her hand on his genitals. The interrogator was on her menstrual period and she wiped blood from her body on his face and head," the memo said.

The FBI records also included at least 19 separate charges of beatings or other severe violence on the part of guards or others in control of the prisoners in Afghanistan or at Guantanamo Bay.

One prisoner said he was kicked in the stomach, back and head by U.S. military personnel at an unknown location and suffered a broken shoulder.

The US is holding more than 500 prisoners from its so-called war on terrorism at the naval base.

Many of them were detained in Afghanistan after US-led troops invaded the country and ousted the Taliban in late 2001.

The FBI disclosures came on the same day that Amnesty International released its annual report branding Guantanamo "the gulag of our time" and labeling the US "a leading purveyor and practitioner" of torture and mistreatment of prisoners.

"When the most powerful country in the world thumbs its nose at the rule of law and human rights, it grants a license to others to commit abuse with impunity," Amnesty Secretary General Irene Khan said.