Israeli soldiers 'desecrated Koran during riot'
An Israeli Arab member of parliament today claimed that Israeli soldiers desecrated the Koran, the Islamic holy book, while searching Palestinian security prisoners.
An Israeli official denied the charge.
Ahmed Tibi, who represents an Israeli Arab political party, said he received complaints from prisoners at the Megiddo prison that soldiers tore and stepped on three copies of the Koran while searching Palestinians and their possessions this morning.
“This is vulgar, primitive behaviour that cannot be allowed to happen,” he said, calling for a special session of parliament to discuss the affair.
He said he also called Public Security Minister Gideon Ezra to complain, and prisoners would go on a hunger strike on Wednesday to protest.
Israeli Prisons Authority spokesman Ofer Lefler said there was no such desecration.
He said 260 soldiers went into the prison to search for weapons, setting off unrest. A soldier was inspecting an old copy of the Koran when three pages fell to the floor. The soldier put the pages back in the holy book, Lefler said, and that was the extent of the incident.
Later, the Prisons Authority issued a statement saying that that whole incident was a “provocation”’ by the prisoners, and the incident never happened.
The prisoners presented the book that was said to have been desecrated, and officials discovered that pages from another book had been inserted.
The extra pages were larger than the book, the statement said, and had not fallen out of a Koran.
The statement said the search revealed cellular telephones, knives and other forbidden articles.
Tibi has often been embroiled in controversies involving Israeli security forces. He was criticised by a parliamentary committee for an incident in which he slapped an officer at a West Bank roadblock. Israeli authorities have accused him of provoking police and soldiers in order to reap publicity, but he has denied the charges.
A recent report of US soldiers desecrating the Koran at Guantanamo, Cuba, set off riots in the Muslim world. The report later turned out to be unfounded.
