They Heard The "Koran Abuse" Charge Was Working
The government of Pakistan has released 17 men who were imprisoned in Lahore for some months after being freed from Guantanamo Bay:
The men were apparently released on the theory that they were innocent, but all six who were interviewed by the Associated Press acknowledged that "they were arrested in Afghanistan after going there to fight the U.S.-led coalition that ousted the hard-line Taliban regime in late 2001 for harboring Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida network." One said, "If I get a chance to fight jihad again, I will definitely go. I will not miss it." Keep that in mind next time you read about those poor innocents who have been released from Guantanamo Bay because they had no connection to terrorism.
The former detainees immediately began retailing Koran abuse tales:
"During interrogation, whenever I would make a reference to the Quran they would hit me in the face with a copy (of it). They would tear it into pieces. They would tell me that Quran teaches us terrorism," said Salahuddin Ayubi, a 31-year-old from Rajanpur in eastern Pakistan."They would throw the Quran against the roof, which would tear it into pieces and they would say 'This is the real source of terrorism,'" Ayubi said. "This happened several times in my interrogation."
Hafiz Ahsan, a 26-year-old Lahore tailor who said he was arrested three years ago in southern Afghanistan during the "jihad" against America — claimed he saw interrogators stand on the Quran and throw the book in urine.
"Our interrogators would stand on the Quran and they would ask, 'Call your God and ask him to rescue you,'" he said. "They would throw Quran in a bucket of urine. They would tear the Quran and throw it at our faces. All this happened in front of our eyes. It was a routine."
He claimed inmates staged a hunger strike in protest, and were then tortured with electric shocks.
The AP helpfully explains that "A Pentagon report released this month confirmed five cases in which U.S. guards at Guantanamo mishandled the Quran, including incidents in which one copy of the book was splashed with urine and another was stepped on." If you didn't read Power Line, you might not know that the "urine incident" was an accident that couldn't have involved more than a few drops. From their statements, it sounds like the terrorists know how the Army's "Koran abuse" investigation has been reported. In fact, that turns out to be the case:
The freed detainees said they had learned about the controversy from other inmates and prison officials.
The terrorists' sexual fantasies have been getting a workout too:
Rahman claimed female interrogators at Guantanamo stripped in front of prisoners despite pleas for them not to — echoing allegations leveled by other inmates, although not by the other five inmates who spoke to AP on Monday."Girls would interrogate us. They would take off their clothes in front of us. They would make different poses in front of us and they would sit on our chests," said Rahman. "This was shameful."
The terrorists are obviously lying, but the AP professes strict neutrality: "The claims of the men, who spoke to reporters after joyful family reunions outside the jail in Lahore, could not be confirmed independently." No kidding.
So the news cycle continues apace. The terrorists are not, to put it politely, geniuses, but they are smart enough to figure out how to tailor their charges to the mis-reporting of events at Guantanamo Bay by the American press.
