ISLAMABAD - An Afghan who spent three years at Guantanamo Bay detention centre said Tuesday that interrogators frequently desecrated the Koran, which prompted a hunger strike and a US apology.
Abdul Rahim, 40, said during an interview on AVT Khyber television, a Pashtu-language private channel, that abuse of the Muslim holy book was routine.
"Abuse of the Koran was done routinely particularly in the early days of detention," Rahim said. His claims could not be independently verified.
"They would throw the holy book on the ground, trample upon it and tell the prisoner under interrogation no one could stop them from doing that.
"The news of sacrilege sent shockwaves among the prisoners and all of us went on a hunger strike.
"We declined to participate in the interrogation and also did not eat anything for many, many days," he said.
Rahim, according to the interviewer, said that the hunger strike ended only after top American officials apologised for the desecration.
"All of us ended the hunger strike except for a Palestinian. It was due to our efforts and sacrifices that we restored the honour of the Koran," he said.
The interview came after the American magazine Newsweek on Monday retracted an article which said interrogators had thrown a Koran into a toilet to rattle Muslim prisoners at the detention facility in Cuba.
The report sparked protests throughout the Muslim world. In Afghanistan 14 people were killed.
Rahim said he was captured in Peshawar by Pakistani intelligence in 2001, handed over to US custody and held at Guantanamo`s Camp X-Ray before his release and return to Pakistan, via the Afghan capital Kabul, in mid-April.
He now owns a small business in Peshawar and is an author.
His brother, Badaruzzaman, was also in Guantanamo Bay prior to his release in October last year. He has returned to Pakistan.
Rahim said prisoners were kept in harsh conditions and in cages.
"The cages were made of steel and also the beds on which we used to sleep. At times we created lots of noise by thumping the steel cages that would disturb the Americans."
He said the interrogators did not physically torture him but they used other methods to squeeze information.
Rahim said that often when Americans walked between the cages prisoners would spit on them. One prisoner threw a glass of urine on them, he said.
More than 500 detainees, most captured in Afghanistan or Pakistan following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, are held as "enemy combatants" at Guantanamo.
05/17/2005 15:54 GMT