Source: Los Angeles Times
Wire Service: AP/Reuters
h ttp://w ww.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-052705koran_wr,0,4705094.story?coll=la-home-headlines
On May 27, 2005 the Associated Press reported, "Burning U.S. flags and throwing tomatoes at a likeness of President Bush, Muslims from Dhaka to Jakarta rallied today to protest the alleged desecration of Islam's holy book by military prison interrogators in Guantanamo, Bay, Cuba. More than 15,000 people took to the streets of Pakistan's largest cities. Thousands more rallied in Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia and Kashmir, where police fired teargas and used batons to disperse a crowd of several hundred. The protests came one day after U.S. investigators admitted there was mishandling of Islam's holy book, the Koran. But they claimed it was for the most part inadvertent and denied one had been put in a toilet, as Newsweek magazine had claimed in a now-retracted report. The protest in this city, Pakistan's capital, began in a tense atmosphere just hours after a bomb blast at a Muslim shrine killed at least 20 people at an annual celebration. The motive for the suspected suicide bombing was not immediately clear. 'It's time for Muslims to unite,' Qazi Hussain Ahmed, head of a religious alliance that organized many of the rallies, told a crowd of more than 5,000. 'We have been given a challenge.' He said more rallies were planned today in London, Washington D.C., New York, Chicago, Iraq, Palestine and Syria."