Newsweek Pulls Back on Report That Provoked Afghan Riots

New York Times: "Newsweek magazine said today that it might have erred in reporting that American interrogators at the Guantánamo Bay naval base in Cuba might have desecrated detainees' copies of the Koran, a report that has provoked deadly rioting in Afghanistan.

But Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, said angrily today that if such acts of desecration were discovered, "people will be held to account."

Riots inspired by the Newsweek report have broken out elsewhere in the region. But at least 17 people have died in Afghanistan, where the worst violence erupted in the town of Ghazni, south of Kabul.

Townspeople and officials said that demonstrators had been stirred to outrage by local mullahs during Friday prayer, but acknowledged that "troublemakers" may have exploited the situation to shoot at the police.

Mr. Hadley, a man of normally calm demeanor, got somewhat exercised when asked about the report that a Koran might have been thrown into a toilet, or placed on a toilet seat, at Guantánamo.

"This is not our policy," he said on CNN. "Our policy is to have nothing but the utmost respect for the holy Koran, and if this did occur, people will be held to account."

Newsweek reported an even angrier reaction from the Pentagon spokesman, Lawrence DiRita to the article. Told that an anonymous government official had insisted to a reporter that he clearly recalled investigative reports describing "a toilet incident" -- but might have been confused about where exactly he saw this -- the magazine said, "DiRita exploded: 'People are dead because of what this son of a bitch said. How could he be credible now?' "

The magazine said the Defense Department had found no evidence of such desecration; in an editorial, the magazine said, "we regret that we got any part of our story wrong and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst."

Newsweek carried its brief original report in the May 9 issue. It noted today that similar reports had circulated for months in the British and Russian press, and on the Arab news agency Al-Jazeera.

The magazine said that notes from Marc Falkoff, who is representing 13 Yemenis held at Guantánamo, blamed a guard stomping on a Koran for an incident in August 2003 when 23 detainees tried to kill themselves. One of the 13 told Mr. Falkoff, according to his notes, that another detainee had attempted suicide "after the guard took his Koran and threw it in the toilet."

A series of military spokesmen have denied that such an incident took place, however.

Newsweek noted that the explosive protests seemed surprising to some, compared to reaction to the documented detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.

"But Westerners, including those at Newsweek, may underestimate how severely Muslims resent the American presence," the magazine wrote, "especially when it in any way interferes with Islamic religious faith."

Last week, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said pointedly that any desecration of the Koran would not be tolerated.

Earlier, President Hamid Karzai, returning from a trip to drum up more aid from Europe, expressed shame and frustration at the violence that has racked Afghanistan over the past week.

At his heavily guarded office in Kabul, he blamed "enemies of peace" and "enemies of stability" for violently subverting student protests over the reports of Koran desecrations.

"Who are they who have such enmity with Afghanistan," Mr. Karzai said Saturday, "a nation that is begging for money to build the country and construct buildings, and during the night they come and destroy it?"

He pointed out that 200 Korans had been burned when a library in Jalalabad was set on fire.

"Afghan students were encouraged to rise up and start demonstrations," he said, "and then other elements got into the demonstration and in the name of Afghanistan's students and boys, destroyed Afghanistan's property."

He mentioned no names, but seemed to outline the agenda of Al Qaeda, elements in Pakistan and renegade Afghan commanders.

Mr. Karzai said he could understand the anger at the Newsweek report. But he urged people to await the outcome of the investigation that the Bush administration has promised.

"If it is true that it happened," he said, "we will ask the U.S. that the perpetrator be punished."

On Thursday, Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was asked at a Pentagon briefing about the reported desecration. He said the only relevant log entry found so far concerned a detainee who was "reported by a guard to be ripping pages out of a Koran and putting in the toilet to stop it up as a protest."

He said that incident had not been confirmed.

Carlotta Gall of The New York Times contributed reporting from Ghazni, Afghanistan, for this article."