Laughing Graner was chief torturer, says inmate

Trent Badger, Fort Hood

Amin al-Sheikh, testifying via videotaped deposition shown in court at Ford Hood, Texas, USA, yesterday, said Graner also made him eat pork and drink

alcohol, in violation of his Muslim faith. Graner also on different occasions accompanied a US soldier who urinated on him, al-Sheikh said. Another American threatened to rape him, he said.

He said he listened through his cell wall while Graner and other Americans forced a Yemeni prisoner eat from a toilet.

Graner is the first soldier accused in the Abu Ghraib scandal to go on trial, and prosecutors allege he was the ringleader of the abuse. Three guards from the 372nd Military Police Company have pleaded guilty to abusing detainees.

Asked if Graner appeared to enjoy hurting him, al-Sheikh said through an interpreter: “He was laughing and singing.”

Graner, a reservist, is charged with conspiracy to maltreat detainees, two counts of assault, dereliction of duty and committing indecent acts. He faces more than 17 years in a military prison if the jury of four army officers and six enlisted men convict him on all counts. Testimony began on Monday.

Al-Sheikh said he went to Iraq in 2003 to fight US-led forces, and he was taken to Abu Ghraib after being captured with AK-47 assault rifles, grenades and bomb-making material.

While being kept at a tent camp next to Abu Ghraib, al-Sheikh said, he was wounded in a shoot-out with Americans after he got a handgun from an Iraqi guard because he feared for his life. He said Graner, whom he described as the main torturer, jumped on his injured leg and struck it.

That is the basis for one of the charges. On another occasion he said, Graner handcuffed him to his cell door with his arms behind his back for eight hours.

Under defence questioning, al-Sheikh said Graner at times worked with Americans who were interrogating him at Abu Ghraib. The defence maintains that Graner and other soldiers were ordered by military and civilian intelligence to soften up detainees for questioning, and that they had no choice but to obey. Al-Sheikh said interrogators known as Steve and Mikey made it clear that he would be roughed up by Graner if he did not cooperate.

Meanwhile, Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said yesterday that some areas of Iraq will probably be too unsafe to take part in the January 30 elections, as he promised to increase the size of the army in the face of a bloody insurgency, whose latest victims included 13 Iraqis killed by two bombings.

Mr Allawi said the government had allocated E 1.67 billion to expand the army from 100,000 to 150,000 troops and provide it with new weaponry. Iraq’s armed forces are poorly trained and often under-equipped, making them an easy target.

A suicide car bomber targeting a police headquarters in Tikrit killed six people and wounded 12. The past two days have seen a new surge of insurgent attacks in the weeks before voting.