WASHINGTON — The Pentagon yesterday for the first time released details about mishandling of the Quran at the Guantánamo Bay prison for terrorism suspects, confirming that a soldier deliberately kicked the Muslim holy book and that an interrogator stepped on a Quran and was later fired for "a pattern of unacceptable behavior."

In other confirmed incidents, a guard's urine came through an air vent and splashed on a detainee and his Quran; water balloons thrown by prison guards caused an unspecified number of Qurans to get wet; and a two-word obscenity was written in English on the inside of a Quran.

The findings, released last night, are among the results of an investigation last month by Brig. Gen. Jay Hood, the commander of the U.S. detention center in Cuba.

In a written statement last night, he said that despite a few instances of mishandling, his investigation "revealed a consistent, documented policy of respectful handling of the Quran dating back almost 2 ½ years."

The inquiry was triggered by a Newsweek magazine report — later retracted — that a U.S. soldier had flushed one Guantánamo Bay detainee's Quran down a toilet.

The story stirred worldwide controversy and some in the Bush administration blamed it for deadly demonstrations in Afghanistan.

Last week, Hood disclosed that he had confirmed five cases of mishandling of the Quran, but he did not provide details.

Yesterday's statement pointed out that officials have issued more than 1,600 Qurans at the facility, moved detainees thousands of times and looked through 25,000 documents in their investigation.

Lawrence Di Rita, a spokesman for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, did not address the confirmed incidents of mishandling the Quran. Reached while traveling with Rumsfeld in Asia, Di Rita said that U.S. Southern Command policy calls for "serious, respectful and appropriate" handling of the Quran.

"The Hood inquiry would appear to affirm that policy."

Hood said that of nine mishandling cases studied in detail by reviewing thousands of pages of written records, five were confirmed to have happened. He could not determine whether the four others took place.

In one of the four unconfirmed cases, a detainee in April 2003 complained to FBI and other interrogators that guards "constantly defile the Quran." The detainee alleged that in one instance a guard threw a Quran into a bag of wet towels to anger another detainee; he also alleged that another guard said the Quran belonged in the toilet and that guards were ordered to do these things.

Hood said he found no other record of this detainee mentioning Quran mishandling. The detainee has since been released.

In the most recent confirmed case, Hood said a detainee complained on March 25 of urine splashing on him and his Quran. An unidentified guard admitted at the time that "he was at fault," the Hood report said, although it did not say whether the act was deliberate. The guard's supervisor reprimanded him and assigned him to gate-guard duty, where he had no contact with detainees for the remainder of his assignment at Guantánamo Bay.

As described in the Hood report, the guard had left his observation post and went outside to urinate. He urinated near an air vent and the wind blew his urine through the vent into the cellblock. The statement said the detainee was given a new prison uniform and Quran.

In another of the confirmed cases, a contract interrogator stepped on a detainee's Quran in July 2003 and then apologized. "The interrogator was later terminated for a pattern of unacceptable behavior, an inability to follow direct guidance and poor leadership," the Hood report said.

Hood also said his investigation found 15 cases of detainees mishandling their own Qurans. "These included using a Quran as a pillow, ripping pages out of the Quran, attempting to flush a Quran down the toilet and urinating on the Quran," Hood's report said. It offered no explanation for those alleged abuses.

Allegations of Quran desecration at Guantánamo Bay have led to anti-U.S. passions in many Muslim nations, although Pentagon officials have insisted that the problems were relatively minor and that U.S. commanders have gone to great lengths to enable detainees to practice their religion in captivity.

Hood said last week that he found no credible evidence that a Quran was ever flushed down a toilet, as Newsweek had reported. He said a prisoner who was reported to have complained to an FBI agent in 2002 that a military guard threw a Quran in the toilet has since told Hood's investigators that he never witnessed any form of Quran desecration.

Other prisoners who were returned to their home countries after serving time at Guantánamo Bay as terrorism suspects have alleged Quran desecration by U.S. guards, and some have said a Quran was placed in a toilet.

Hood said the inquiry "reviewed every available detainee record," including 31,000 pages of documents such as day-to-day logs, court papers filed by prisoners and allegations in 38 news articles. But officials said they were aware of only one interview conducted in the inquiry.

There are about 540 detainees at Guantánamo Bay. Some have been there more than three years without being charged with a crime. Most were seized in Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002 and were sent to Guantánamo in hope of extracting useful intelligence about the al-Qaida terrorist network.

Tom Wilner, a lawyer who represents 11 Kuwaiti nationals being held at Guantánamo Bay, said the number and persistence of reports of Quran mistreatment indicate a much broader problem than indicated by the Hood inquiry.

"It's sort of amazing today that we define truth as only when the government confirms something happened," Wilner said.

Material from The Washington Post and Reuters is included in this report.