The Newsweek magazine has apologized in this week's issue for publishing a report last week which indicated that some investigators at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, U.S. have defiled the holy Quran during investigations to coerce Muslim detainees into giving information. Editor Mark Whitaker said , in an interview with the Washington Post published today, that the story was based on information from a "senior U.S. government official" who can no longer verify claims that U.S. military investigators in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had flushed a Quran down a toilet. "There had been previous reports about the Quran being defiled, but they always seemed to be rumors or allegations made by sources without evidence. The fact that a knowledgeable source in the U.S. government was telling us the government itself had knowledge of this was newsworthy," Whitaker told the paper. The magazine also apologized that it was depending on a sole source of information, noting that it has tried to reach officials of the U.S. Defense Department to confirm or deny the report but one of them declined to comment on the allegations and another was skeptical about the accuracy of further information in the magazine's report without mentioning the holy Quran's incident. The magazine also expressed regret for protests and demonstrations triggered by its report in the Islamic world and extended condolences to families of victims who were killed in riots in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
