martes, mayo 24, 2005

MIRAD LO QUE DICE Newsweek ahora:
According to Di Rita, when the first prisons were built for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo in early 2002, prison guards were instructed to respect the detainees’ religious rituals. The prisoners were given Qur’ans, which they hung from the walls of their cells in cotton surgical masks provided by the prison. Log entries by the guards indicate that in about a dozen cases, the detainees themselves somehow damaged their Qur’ans. In one case a prisoner allegedly ripped up a Qur’an; in another a prisoner tore the cover off his Qur’an. In three cases, detainees tried to stuff pages from their Qur’ans down their toilets, according to the Defense Department’s account of what is in the guards’ reports. (NEWSWEEK was not permitted to see the log items.) The log entries do not indicate why the detainees might have done this, said Di Rita, and prison commanders concluded that certain hard-core prisoners would try to agitate the other detainees by alleging disrespect for Muslim articles of faith.

In light of the controversy, one of these incidents bears special notice. Last week, NEWSWEEK interviewed Command Sgt. John VanNatta, who served as the prison’s warden from October 2002 to the fall of 2003. VanNatta recounted that in 2002, the inmates suddenly started yelling that the guards had thrown a Qur’an on or near an Asian-style squat toilet. The guards found an inmate who admitted that he had dropped his Qur’an near his toilet. According to VanNatta, the inmate then was taken cell to cell to explain this to other detainees to quell the unrest. But the incident could partly account for the multiple allegations among detainees, including one by a released British detainee in a lawsuit that claims that guards flushed Qur’ans down toilets.

Hay más detalles (via LGF). Son informaciones que aportan una luz muy distinta a lo que ellos mismos publicaron hace unas semanas. Lástima que venga demasiado tarde.

ACTUALIZACIÓN. También via LGF veo lo que opina el legendario Ben Bradlee, antiguo director del Washington Post y unánimemente respetado por su papel en el Watergate, incluso por los impermeables. Desgraciadamente no pongo demasiadas esperanzas en que escuchen lo que dice sobre este asunto.