The international Red Cross told US authorities about allegations that American personnel at the Guantanamo Bay detention centre showed disrespect to the Koran.
Delegates from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) informed US authorities, who took action to stop the alleged abuse, said spokesman Simon Schorno. He declined to specify the nature of the incidents.
About 15 people died in clashes with security forces in Afghanistan last week after Newsweekreported that US interrogators had flushed a Koran down a toilet at the prison camp for terrorist suspects at the US military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The magazine later retracted the story.
Red Cross delegates, who have visited Guantanamo regularly since the arrival in January 2002 of the first of about 600 detainees, did not witness any instances of disrespect toward the Koran. But Mr Schorno said the organisation had received an unspecified number of reports from detainees that this had occurred.
"All information we received were corroborated allegations," he said. "Obviously, it is not just one person telling us something happened and we just fire up."
On January 19th, 2003, after the Geneva-based ICRC's reports, the Pentagon issued nearly three pages of guidelines for handling of the Koran. Since then, according to the Chicago Tribune, the Red Cross has not received any other complaints or documented similar incidents.
"We brought it to their attention and we believe there was a reaction, and that's really the objective of our reporting and interaction with the authorities," the Red Cross spokesman said.
AP