In India, outrage over Koran report

CALCUTTA -- Muslim protesters burned, spit, and urinated on a US flag yesterday in eastern India, accusing Americans of desecrating Islam's holy book as anger persisted despite the retraction of a magazine report that a Koran was flushed down a toilet at the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

US officials have said they found nothing to substantiate the Newsweek report that interrogators at the camp flushed a copy of the holy book down the toilet to unnerve an inmate.

But because of frequent reports of mistreatment at the camp from released detainees, some Muslims remained convinced that the desecration happened and that US officials pressured the magazine to retract the story.

In London, a former prisoner at Guantanamo said at a demonstration outside the US Embassy that guards at the camp had mistreated his Koran.

''This was one of the methods they used, throwing the Koran, my Koran, on the floor in my cell. This was in the first month at Camp Delta, but it is not something that stopped, rather continued and increased," said Martin Mubanga, who was released from the prison in January.

''It's a shame we have had to wait for a magazine to publish and then retract a story concerning the treatment of the Koran."

He spoke as about 200 protesters outside the embassy chanted ''kill, kill George Bush" and other anti-US slogans. A man with a megaphone led chants including ''USA, watch your back -- Osama is coming back" and ''bomb, bomb New York."

Thousands also took to the streets in the Palestinian territories and in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, but the demonstrations were nothing on the scale of rioting in Afghanistan last week in which 15 people died and protesters threw rocks at police.

Riot police watched but did not stop about 500 protesters who shouted slogans against the United States and forced a traffic shutdown in the heart of the eastern Indian city of Calcutta.

The protest began at a mosque after Friday afternoon prayers conducted by the imam, or chief priest, who then led demonstrators to the road.

''Death to America!" they cried as men spat on the flag.

They asked a boy in the crowd to urinate on it. The 20-minute protest ended with the burning of two American flags.