The International Red Cross says it had corroborated reports from Guantanamo Bay detainees about abuse of the Koran by U.S. personnel. But when they told the U.S. authorities, the abuse stopped and they received no more reports from 2003 onwards.
An excerpt from the Salon story:
The international Red Cross told U.S. authorities about allegations that American personnel at the Guantanamo Bay detention center showed disrespect to Islam's holy book, the Quran, a spokesman said Thursday.
Delegates from the International Committee of the Red Cross informed U.S. authorities, who took action to stop the alleged abuse, said spokesman Simon Schorno. He declined to specify the nature of the incidents.
"We're basically referring in general terms to disrespect of the Quran, and that's where we leave it," Schorno told The Associated Press. "We believe that since, U.S. authorities have taken the corrective measures that we required in our interventions." ...
Red Cross delegates, who have visited Guantanamo regularly since the arrival in January 2002 of the first of about 600 detainees, did not personally witness any instances of disrespect toward the Quran. Instead, Schorno said, they received an unspecified number of reports from detainees that this had occurred.
Schorno told the Chicago Tribune, which first reported the story Thursday, that the delegates gathered and corroborated enough similar, independent reports from detainees to raise the issue on numerous occasions with Guantanamo commanders and Pentagon officials.
"All information we received were corroborated allegations," he told the newspaper. "Obviously, it is not just one person telling us something happened and we just fire up." It was unclear what the Red Cross' corroboration process consisted of.
On Jan. 19, 2003, after the Geneva-based ICRC's reports, the Pentagon issued nearly three pages of guidelines for handling of the Quran. Since then, according to the Tribune, the Red Cross has not received any other complaints or documented similar incidents.