Amazing. Mainstream media is determined to give the jihadis a weapon they can exploit to the fullest, and the ACLU is right with them: FBI memo reports Guantanamo guards flushing Koran. (Hat tip: LGF readers.)

Notice once again: this story originates with an anonymous source whose complaint was investigated and not found to be credible—and more importantly, Islamists are specifically trained to make claims like this.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An FBI agent wrote in a 2002 document made public on Wednesday that a detainee held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had accused American jailers there of flushing the Koran down a toilet.

The Pentagon said the allegation was not credible.

The declassified document’s release came the week after the Bush administration denounced as wrong a May 9 Newsweek article that stated U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo had flushed a Koran down a toilet to try to make detainees talk. The magazine retracted the article, which had triggered protests in Afghanistan in which 16 people died.

The newly released document, dated Aug. 1, 2002, contained a summary of statements made days earlier by a detainee, whose name was redacted, in two interviews with an FBI special agent, whose name also was withheld, at the Guantanamo prison for foreign terrorism suspects.

The American Civil Liberties Union released the memo and other FBI documents it obtained from the government under court order through the Freedom of Information Act.

“Personally, he has nothing against the United States. The guards in the detention facility do not treat him well. Their behavior is bad. About five months ago, the guards beat the detainees. They flushed a Koran in the toilet,” the FBI agent wrote.

“It’s not credible,” chief Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said of the allegation regarding a Koran in a toilet.

Di Rita said the U.S. military questioned the detainee on May 14, and that the man was “very cooperative and answered the questions but did not corroborate the allegation recorded on Aug. 1, 2002.” Di Rita said he did not know whether the man actually recanted the allegation.

“These kind of, sort of, fantastic charges about our guys doing something willfully heinous to a Koran for the purposes of rattling detainees are not credible on their face,” Di Rita told reporters.

But ACLU lawyer Jameel Jaffer trusts the detainees more than the US military.

“Unfortunately, one thing we’ve learned over the last couple of years is that detainee statements about their treatment at Guantanamo and other detention centers sometimes have turned out to be more credible than U.S. government statements,” said ACLU lawyer Jameel Jaffer.

UPDATE at 5/25/05 5:47:18 pm:

The Boston Globe also likes this story: FBI records cite Quran abuse allegations. (Hat tip: Amy.)

And so does the Los Angeles Times: Guantanamo Detainees Had Alleged Koran Desecration. (Hat tip: Roger L. Simon.)