The Pentagon said Thursday that the Guantanamo detainee who reportedly complained to an FBI investigator in 2002 of Koran desecration by US guards had retracted his allegation this month.

"We've gone back to the detainee who allegedly made the allegation, and he has said that's not what -- it didn't happen,"Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said at a news conference.

"So the underlying allegation -- the detainee himself, within the last two weeks said that didn't happen," he said.

Newly released FBI memos showed that an FBI interrogator noted a prisoner's allegation in Aug. 2002 in an interview summary that guards flushed a Koran down the toilet.

The disclosure came on the heels of controversy over a Newsweekreport saying that government investigators had corroborated an almost identical incident. The Newsweek report caused wide-spread outcry in the Muslim world and the magazine ultimately retracted the story.

Di Rita said the Defense Department had found "absolutely no indication" that US military officers had used Koran as a matter of interrogation policy.

Source: Xinhua