US soldier faces court martial over abuse
Specialist Jeremy Sivits, a member of the 372nd Military Police Company, will stand trial in Baghdad on May 19, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt said.
Sivits has been charged with conspiracy to maltreat subordinates and detainees, dereliction of duty for negligently failing to protect detainees from abuse and cruelty and maltreatment of the detainees.
If convicted of all charges, Sivits could face one year in prison, reduction in rank to private, forfeiture of two-thirds of his pay for a year, a fine or a bad conduct discharge, military officials said. The penalties could include only one, all or any combination of those punishments, officials said.
Seven soldiers, including Sivits, face criminal charges for alleged abuse of Iraqi prisoners. Photographs of the abuse caused outrage across the world after they were published.
Sivits is the first soldier whose trial date has been set and his trial will be open to media coverage, Brig Gen Kimmitt said.
US President George Bush vowed on Saturday: "We will learn all the facts and determine the full extent of these abuses. Those involved will be identified. They will answer for their actions."
Meanwhile, Sivits's father, Daniel, insisted that the army had trained his son as a truck mechanic, not as a prison guard. Jeremy "was just doing what he was told to do," he said last week.
US officials insisted that the abuses at Abu Ghraib were carried out by a handful of soldiers who failed to follow procedures and were not part of a systematic programme of brutality.
"It is not much larger than the people already suspended, in the number of people already charged," Brig Gen Kimmitt said.
"We may see more people involved. We still think this is still a very small number of guards involved.
"Please don't paint with such a wide brush that it indicts the other 135,000 US soldiers and marines out there doing the right thing."
Another one of the soldiers facing charges, Specialist Sabrina Harman, said she and other members of the 372nd Military Police Company took direction from Army military intelligence officers, CIA operatives and from civilian contractors who conducted interrogations.
Harman, 26, is one of two smiling soldiers seen in a photo taken at Abu Ghraib as they stand behind naked, hooded Iraqi prisoners stacked in a pyramid.
In an interview by email from Baghdad, Harman told The Washington Post it was made clear to her that her mission was to break down the prisoners.
"They would bring in one to several prisoners at a time already hooded and cuffed," Harman said. "The job of the MP was to keep them awake, make it hell so they would talk."
On Saturday, Major General Geoffrey Miller, the head of US detention centres in Iraq, said the military has no plans to close Abu Ghraib. He blamed the abuse of detainees there on poor leadership and disregard for the rules.
Maj Gen Miller, who visited all 14 prison facilities in Iraq to review procedures, said an Army team of 31 specialists was in the country retraining its prison guards, a process that would last until June 30.
He insisted that Iraqi prisoners were now being treated in accordance with the Geneva Conventions and that interrogation teams were following army guidelines while trying to get "the best intelligence as rapidly as possible".
Maj Gen Miller was named head of prisons in April after Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, the commander of Abu Ghraib, was suspended over the allegations of abuse by soldiers under her command.
He added that the United States does intend to cut the number of prisoners to help improve conditions but added that "we will continue to conduct interrogation missions at the Abu Ghraib facility."
Brig Gen Kimmitt said yesterday that 325 prisoners had been released from various detention centres over the past two weeks.
