The Nation | Blog | The Daily Outrage | Newsweek Was Right: Part II | Ari Berman: "No sooner does Newsweek retract its Koran desecration story then a flurry of news reports attest to just what Newsweek seemed to be reporting.

'Dozens have Alleged Koran's Mishandling' read a Los Angeles Times headline from Sunday. 'They tore it and threw it on the floor,' former detainee Mohammed Mazouz said of guards at Guantanamo Bay. 'They urinated on it. They walked on top of the Koran. They used the Koran like a carpet.'

Defense Department shill Lawrence DiRita claims that prison guards were instructed to respect Muslim religious rituals after the prisons for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay were first built in early 2002. But between 2002 and mid-2003 the International Red Cross received 'multiple' reports from detainees that American interrogators had abused the Koran. 'We raised the issues in our reports and verbally over a lengthy period of time,' ICRC spokesman Simon Schorno said last week. 'We talked to many detainees, not just one person.' The FBI also knew of similar accusations at the time."

(Via The Nation Weblogs.)