First court martial in prison abuse scandal

A 24-year-old military policeman has been ordered to stand trial in the first court martial in connection with abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison.

Spc Jeremy Sivits of Hyndman, Pennsylvania, 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 detainees.

Seven soldiers including Sivits are facing criminal charges for alleged abuse of Iraqi prisoners. Photographs of the abuse were published throughout the world.

Sivits is the first for whom a trial date has been set.

US President George Bush vowed yesterday that “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.”

US officials have 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,” 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 American soldiers and Marines out there doing the right thing.”

The Army trained Sivits as a truck mechanic, not as a prison guard, his father Daniel said. He said his son “was just doing what he was told to do.”

Kimmitt told reporters that Sivit’s trial will be open to media coverage.

Yesterday, the head of US detention centres in Iraq, Major General Geoffrey Miller, said the military has no plans to close the Abu Ghraib prison and blamed the abuse of detainees there on poor leadership and disregard for the rules.

Kimmitt said today that 325 prisoners had been released from various detention centres over the past two weeks.