Nbadan
05-19-2005, 10:22 AM
Red Cross told U.S. of Koran incidents
By Cam Simpson and Mark Silva
Washington Bureau
Published May 19, 2005
WASHINGTON -- The International Committee of the Red Cross documented what it called credible information about U.S. personnel disrespecting or mishandling Korans at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and pointed it out to the Pentagon in confidential reports during 2002 and early 2003, an ICRC spokesman said Wednesday.
Representatives of the ICRC, who have played a key role in investigating abuse allegations at the facility in Cuba and other U.S. military prisons, never witnessed such incidents firsthand during on-site visits, said Simon Schorno, an ICRC spokesman in Washington.
But ICRC delegates, who have been granted access to the secretive camp since January 2002, gathered and corroborated enough similar, independent reports from detainees to raise the issue multiple times with Guantanamo commanders and with Pentagon officials, Schorno said in an interview Wednesday.
....
In addition to the retracted Newsweek story, senior Bush administration officials have repeatedly downplayed other reports regarding alleged abuses of the Koran at Guantanamo, largely dismissing them because they came from current or former detainees.
<</SNIP>>
Chicago Tribune (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0505190306may19,1,278199.story?coll=chi-news-hed)
This won't matter to wacko fundamentalists like TRO and NeoCon since they will just accuse the RC of being a leftist/George Soro sponsored organization.
ATTENTION NEWSWEEK EDITORS/JOURNALISTS:
Next week, please publish THIS story, with full quotes and attributed sources to the Red Cross (and why not the dozen plus other sources that have been documented elsewhere)
Write the story, attribute the sources and call this administration to task for its attempt to scapegoat your magazine for its own disastrous intervention policies.
By Cam Simpson and Mark Silva
Washington Bureau
Published May 19, 2005
WASHINGTON -- The International Committee of the Red Cross documented what it called credible information about U.S. personnel disrespecting or mishandling Korans at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and pointed it out to the Pentagon in confidential reports during 2002 and early 2003, an ICRC spokesman said Wednesday.
Representatives of the ICRC, who have played a key role in investigating abuse allegations at the facility in Cuba and other U.S. military prisons, never witnessed such incidents firsthand during on-site visits, said Simon Schorno, an ICRC spokesman in Washington.
But ICRC delegates, who have been granted access to the secretive camp since January 2002, gathered and corroborated enough similar, independent reports from detainees to raise the issue multiple times with Guantanamo commanders and with Pentagon officials, Schorno said in an interview Wednesday.
....
In addition to the retracted Newsweek story, senior Bush administration officials have repeatedly downplayed other reports regarding alleged abuses of the Koran at Guantanamo, largely dismissing them because they came from current or former detainees.
<</SNIP>>
Chicago Tribune (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0505190306may19,1,278199.story?coll=chi-news-hed)
This won't matter to wacko fundamentalists like TRO and NeoCon since they will just accuse the RC of being a leftist/George Soro sponsored organization.
ATTENTION NEWSWEEK EDITORS/JOURNALISTS:
Next week, please publish THIS story, with full quotes and attributed sources to the Red Cross (and why not the dozen plus other sources that have been documented elsewhere)
Write the story, attribute the sources and call this administration to task for its attempt to scapegoat your magazine for its own disastrous intervention policies.