The US military judge hearing charges of prisoner abuse at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison today rejected a defence request for Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld to submit to an interview, but said he would reconsider if the defence could show a Rumsfeld link to the case.

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorised the expansion of a secret programme that encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of prisoners to obtain intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq, a US magazine claims.

THE US Army general who first investigated prisoner abuse in an Iraqi prison told the US Congress yesterday, the mistreatment resulted from faulty leadership, a “lack of discipline, no training whatsoever and no supervision.”

Americans are expecting more shocking photographs and searing public debate as the Bush administration works to calm the storm over US soldiers’ abuse of Iraqi prisoners.

United States forces in Iraq are doing tests on a trailer that matches the description of a mobile biological weapons laboratory given by various sources including defectors, the Pentagon said tonight.