May 20, 12:16 PM EDT
By SUDIPTO DAS
Associated Press Writer
CALCUTTA, India (AP) -- Muslim protesters burned, spit and urinated
on a U.S. flag Friday in eastern India, accusing Americans of
desecrating Islam's holy book as anger persisted despite the
retraction of a magazine report that a Quran was flushed down a
toilet at Guantanamo Bay.
U.S. officials have said they found nothing to substantiate the
Newsweek report that interrogators at the prison camp in Cuba
flushed a copy of the Quran down the toilet to unnerve an
inmate.
But given frequent reports of mistreatment at the camp from
released detainees, some Muslims remained convinced the desecration
happened and U.S. officials pressured the magazine to deny the
story.
In London, a former prisoner at Guantanamo told a demonstration
outside the U.S. Embassy that guards at the camp had mistreated his
Quran.
"This was one of the methods they used, throwing the Quran, my
Quran, 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 Quran,"
Mubanga said.
He spoke as about 200 protesters gathered outside the embassy,
chanting "kill, kill George Bush" and other anti-American slogans.
Many in the crowd covered their faces with scarves. 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 Somalia's capital of
Mogadishu and the Palestinian territories, 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 some 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, and hit the flag
with shoes and leather slippers. The 20-minute protest ended with
the burning of two American flags.
Muslims are the largest minority in predominantly Hindu India,
forming more than 12 percent of the 1 billion-plus
population.
In the West Bank city of Nablus, some 2,500 Palestinian Hamas
militants streamed out of mosques Friday chanting, "Death to
America, death to Israel."
Muslim preacher Maher Haraz demanded that "America apologize to all
Muslims worldwide, and punish those that trampled on the Quran and
stuffed it in the toilet."
"There will be a Muslim uprising in the world, an uprising of the
Quran," Haraz declared.
Mubanga, 32, was arrested in Zambia in early 2002 and handed over
to U.S. officials, who accused him of being an al-Qaida operative.
He denied the accusation.
He said prisoners had asked for notices to be posted warning U.S.
soldiers that copies of the Quran should not be thrown on the
floor.
"We were not asking to have a gymnasium, we weren't asking to have
swimming pools, only that they did not touch the Quran," he said.
"But time and time again new units, new soldiers would come and
they would use the excuse that these new soldiers did not know how
to handle issues around the Quran."
The international Red Cross said Thursday that it had told U.S.
authorities about allegations of abuse to the Quran and that action
was taken to stop it.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the ICRC's concerns about the
handling of the Quran at Guantanamo were consistent with those the
Pentagon has acknowledged, such as a Quran inadvertently dropping
to the floor.
The Bush administration has called on Newsweek to explain how it
got the story wrong and to report on U.S. military practices
intended to ensure the Quran is handled with respect. The State
Department told its embassies to spread the word abroad that
America respects all religious faiths.
