AN AMERICAN guard at Guantanamo Bay urinated on a copy of the Koran while others kicked, stepped on and soaked copies with water balloons, the Pentagon admitted last night.

A two-word obscenity was written in English on the inside cover of another copy. One interrogator was fined for “a pattern of unacceptable behaviour”, according to a month-long inquiry.

The details will cause further embarrassment for the Pentagon, which has been fighting claims that the Koran was systematically mishandled as a tactic by US interrogators to break detainees.

The findings were deliberately released late into the night in an attempt to minimise the damage. But Pentagon chiefs insisted that despite the problems uncovered, the investigation revealed that the vast majority of personnel respected the Koran.

Brigadier-General Jay Hood, the commander of the detention facility in Cuba, said that the inquiry “revealed a consistent, documented policy of respectful handling of the Koran dating back almost 2½ years”.

He added that the inquiry found 15 cases in which detainees had desecrated the Koran, including one in which a prisoner tried to flush a copy down a lavatory — the act of sacrilege blamed on US guards.

The investigation was sparked by a report in Newsweek magazine last month that claimed the Pentagon had substantiated claims by former detainees that some guards and interrogators had flushed a copy of the Koran down a lavatory.

Newsweek retracted the story and apologised after its single source backed away from the account. By then, at least 16 people had died in riots across the Islamic world in protest.

President Bush has challenged the stories of former detainees released from Guantanamo Bay, calling them lies. The remark was in response to a report from Amnesty International that branded Guantanamo Bay, which houses 550 prisoners from Afghanistan and the War on Terror, a “modern- day Gulag”.

General Hood revealed last week that investigators had found five cases of mishandling of the Koran. Further details emerged last night and confirmed that one US soldier deliberately kicked a copy of the Koran and an interrogator stepped on one as part of a pattern of unauthorised behaviour. One unidentified American urinated through an air vent onto a detainee and his Koran. In other confirmed incidents, guards threw water balloons that left an unspecified number of Korans wet.

General Hood’s report also uncovered 15 cases in which detainees were found to have deliberately mishandled copies of the Koran. “These included using a Koran as a pillow, ripping pages out of the Koran, attempting to flush a Koran down the toilet and urinating on the Koran,” the report said.

But General Hood’s report said that he had found no credible evidence that US guards or interrogators flushed a Koran down a lavatory. One prisoner who made such a claim has since admitted it was not true.

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