[Mb-civic] CBC News - TROOPS KILL 4 AT QUR'AN DESECRATION PROTEST

Wed May 11 18:15:46 PDT 2005

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TROOPS KILL 4 AT QUR'AN DESECRATION PROTEST
WebPosted Wed May 11 06:39:50 2005

KABUL, Afghanistan---An angry student protest over how U.S. military
officials at Guantanamo Bay are treating Islam's holiest book turned
tragic Wednesday when four people were shot to death in Afghanistan.

U.S. troops and local police officers opened fire on a crowd of thousands
of students rioting through the city of Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan,
near the border with Pakistan.

As well as the four people who were killed, about 70 were wounded,
officials said.

The crowd had been streaming through city streets, breaking shop windows
and hurling stones at U.S. military vehicles as they chanted "Death to
America" and "Death to Bush."

Break-ins and acts of vandalism were also reported at two United Nations
compounds in the area, as well as Pakistan's consulate and the offices of
a Swedish aid group.

Protests on the same issue taking place in other cities in Afghanistan
were peaceful, with no injuries reported.

The students were angry over an article published last week in the
internationally distributed American magazine Newsweek.

The piece said soldiers interrogating suspected terrorists at the U.S.
military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were placing copies of the Qur'an
on toilets to fluster Muslim prisoners, and had in one case "flushed a
holy book down the toilet."

The U.S. State Department has promised to investigate the allegations in
the article, saying such treatment of a holy book would be against U.S.
policies and practices.

The demonstrators were also demanding that all 520 prisoners be freed
from Guantanamo Bay, where some have been held since the fall of 2001.

Many of those imprisoned in Cuba were captured in Afghanistan as a U.S.-
led military operation ousted the country's Taliban leadership in the
wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.