The Sydney Morning Herald (www.smh.com.au) has issued the following report courtesy of The Washington Post's Dan Eggen:

FBI agents witnessed mistreatment of the Koran at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, including at least one instance in which an interrogator squatted over Islam's holy text in an attempt to offend a prisoner.

In another incident in October 2002, interrogators wrapped a bearded prisoner's head in duct tape "because he would not stop quoting the Koran", newly released bureau documents say.

The reports amount to new and separate allegations of religiously oriented tactics used against Muslim prisoners at the jail.

After an erroneous report of Koran abuse triggered protests overseas in 2005, the US military conducted an investigation that confirmed five incidents of intentional and unintentional mishandling of the Koran at the prison camp. They acknowledged that soldiers and interrogators had kicked the book, had stood on it and, in one case, inadvertently sprayed urine on a copy.

The report released on Tuesday followed an internal survey conducted in 2004 by the FBI, which asked about 500 employees who had served at Guantanamo Bay to report possible mistreatment by law enforcement or military personnel. Agents reported 26 incidents of possible mistreatment.

In a previously unreported allegation, one interrogator bragged to an FBI agent that he had forced a prisoner to listen to "Satanic black metal music for hours", then dressed as a Catholic priest before "baptising" him.

Another agent reported being told that while questioning male captives, female interrogators would sometimes wet their hands and touch prisoners' faces in order to interrupt their prayers.

A Pentagon spokesman said "the issues and facts raised" in the documents "are not new" and that 12 reviews showed there were no Defence Department policies that condoned abuse.

Some of the previously reported tactics mentioned in the new documents include wrapping a prisoner in an Israeli flag, subjecting others to extreme heat and cold, and aggressively using strobe lights on others. Before the Pentagon adopted new interrogation rules in September such treatment was allowed.