Newsweek backs off Guantanamo article

WASHINGTON -- Newsweek magazine yesterday retracted a story that a recent investigation into abuse allegations had revealed that interrogators at Guantanamo Bay had flushed a copy of the Islamic holy book the Koran down a toilet, a report that sparked anti-American protests throughout the Muslim world.

The magazine's decision followed a strong demand from the Bush administration, which said that there was no evidence that Islamic holy books were treated that way at the prison.

''I know of no such incidents," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said yesterday. ''And the Department of Defense said last week that they could find no credible evidence of it either."

Newsweek editor Mark Whitaker responded in a statement: ''Based on what we know now, we are retracting our original story that an internal military investigation had uncovered Koran abuse at Guantanamo Bay."

The decision set off a wave of criticism of the magazine, with some media observers suggesting the news weekly should share responsibility for riots that caused the deaths of 15 people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other countries. Ambassador Edward S. Walker, a former US ambassador to Israel and Egypt, said on the Fox News Channel, ''I can't see any reason or justification for what [Newsweek has] done."

Newsweek was not the first to raise the subject of alleged Koran mistreatment -- by guards, if not interrogators -- at Guantanamo. And the magazine, in an account on its website of how the story came into being, said that the retraction was based on its source's uncertainty whether the toilet incident was confirmed in a particular Defense Department investigation.

Current and former detainees have made charges that Korans were placed in toilets in statements released by their lawyers for at least a year.

In June 2004, the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represented Guantanamo detainees before the Supreme Court, released a 115-page report detailing the experiences of three former prisoners from Tipton, England, who were captured by the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan in November 2001 and taken to Guantanamo, then released in March 2004.

One of them, Asif Iqbal, specifically mentioned guards throwing Korans in buckets used for toilets while the prisoners were still housed in Camp X-Ray, the cage-like prison that was hastily set up when prisoners first arrived from Afghanistan in January 2002 and used until April 29, 2002, when detainees were transferred into a more permanent facility.

''The behavior of the guards towards our religious practices as well as the Koran was also, in my view, designed to cause us as much distress as possible," the statement quoted Iqbal as saying. ''They would kick the Koran, throw it in the toilet, and generally disrespect it."

Other allegations that Guantanamo guards or interrogators had, at some point, put the Koran in a toilet came from an account of an interview with Kuwaiti detainees still held at the base.

In January 2005, Washington lawyer Kristine Huskey, part of a group representing the Kuwaiti detainees, said at a press conference that several prisoners had told her that soldiers had defaced Korans and, in one case, threw one into a toilet. Huskey later identified the prisoner who specifically mentioned a toilet as Khalid al Mutairi. Huskey declined to comment further yesterday.

On Sunday, when Newsweek initially went public with its own questions about the source of its article, the first administration official to denounce it was Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman.

''Newsweek's story about Koran desecration is demonstrably false, and there have thus far been no credible allegations of willful Koran desecration, and Newsweek has produced no such evidence," Whitman said.

Asked yesterday how he squared the sweeping statement -- that ''there have thus far been no credible allegations of willful Koran desecration" -- with the several accounts by current and former detainees, Whitman said that Al Qaeda members were trained to lie.

''Al Qaeda training manuals emphasize the tactic of making false abuse allegations," he said.

Other allegations of guards putting Korans in toilets also entered the public record prior to the Newsweek incident. One of the most prominent examples came in January 2005, when the Seattle Times ran a series on the case of former Army Captain James Yee, the Muslim chaplain at the base who was later accused of being a spy before all charges against him were dropped.

The article contains an interview with Command Sergeant Major John VanNatta, who served as the prison's warden from October 2002 to September 2003. In it, VanNatta is quoted as saying Yee helped ease tensions during prisoner uprisings and helped craft a new culturally sensitive policy toward the handling of Korans.

Before returning to another quote from VanNatta, the article goes on to state that one of detainees' biggest complaints was of guards flushing Korans down the toilet.

However, reached yesterday by the Globe, VanNatta said the Seattle Times article was misleading and that he never said guards had put Korans in toilets. The article's author, Ray Rivera, said he obtained that allegation from the report of the British detainees, not VanNatta.

But VanNatta said that he recalls there were problems stemming from guards touching Korans in order to search them for contraband.

That practice stirred up prisoners, he said, because they considered it blasphemy for non-Muslims to touch the Islamic holy book. VanNatta said the new policy called for Muslims such as translators or Yee to search Korans when necessary.

''There was one allegation where a detainee claimed that his Koran was dropped in a toilet [by a guard], but he later came back and said that he had dropped it in himself," VanNatta said. ''I never heard anyone say anything about kicking a Koran into the toilet. That part, to my knowledge, is not true."

There have also been other accounts of Koran mistreatment that does not include mention of toilets. Another one of the Tipton detainees, Rhuhel Ahmed, said in the report by the Center for Constitutional Rights that prisoners in his area of Camp X-Ray went on a three-day hunger strike after a guard kicked a Koran.

''I saw a guard walk into a detainee's cell, search through the Koran and drop it on the floor," Ahmed is quoted as saying.

''The detainee told him to pick it up and put it into its holder. I remember the guard looked at the Koran on the floor and said 'this' and then kicked it. Everyone started shouting and banging the doors."

Despite the numerous early accounts, the Newsweek story, written by reporters Michael Isikoff and John Barry, set off a firestorm of protests in the Muslim world, where, in some places, desecrating the Koran is punishable by death.

Both reporters are acclaimed investigative journalists. Isikoff played a role in breaking the news of the Monica Lewinsky scandal during the Clinton Administration. Both he and Barry were involved in Newsweek's award-winning coverage of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal last year. The magazine said the article was principally reported by Isikoff.

After the magazine's retraction, the Newsweek story was dissected extensively and criticized frequently by Internet bloggers and the pundits and anchors on cable news networks.

Glenn Reynolds wrote that ''the blogosphere's take on Newsweek's miserable failure of reporting that led to riots and deaths in Afghanistan" is: ''Newsweek lied, people died."

Blogger Roger L. Simon wrote that ''If we lived in a just world this outrage would be the death knell of the unmonitored 'anonymous source,' which can often be the instrument of a totalitarian, not a free, press." Online gossip Matt Drudge put the headline ''Newsweek Riots" on his website.

And the conservative media watchdog group, the Media Research Center, suggested the magazine had not displayed its mea culpa prominently enough, declaring ''Newsweek buries its backtracking."

Mark Jurkowitz of the Globe staff contributed to this report.