Court hearing set for soldiers in Iraq abuse scandal

The US Army said that two soldiers are due in court next week on criminal charges stemming from the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse case.

The military set May 20 as the first court hearing for Staff Sergeant Ivan Frederick II and Sergeant Javal Davis. Charges against the two soldiers were announced on Wednesday.

At the hearing, they will have to enter pleas of guilty or not guilty to the charges. The military said the date and venue for their trials have not been set.

Specialist Jeremy Sivits goes on trial on May 19 before a special court martial, which cannot impose as severe a sentence as a general court martial which Frederick and Davis face.

Davis has been charged with conspiracy to maltreat detainees, dereliction of duty for failing to protect detainees from abuse, maltreatment of detainees, rendering false official statements and assault.

Frederick has been charged with conspiracy to maltreat detainees, dereliction of duty for negligibly failing to protect detainees from abuse, maltreatment of detainees, and wrongfully committing an indecent act by watching detainees commit a sexual act.

The court dates were announced yesterday as US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, under fire for his handing of the scandal, paid an unannounced visit to Iraq, including the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.

Mr Rumsfeld said the scandal was a “body blow for all of us” and those who committed illegal acts would be punished.

“The people who engaged in abuses will be brought to justice,” he said. “The world will see how a free and democratic society functions.”

All three soldiers were members of the 320th Military Police Battalion which was stationed at Abu Ghraib, a prison where Saddam Hussein’s regime tortured and executed thousands of its opponents.

The scandal broke last month when the CBS television 60 Minutes II programme broadcast pictures of US soldiers abusing and humiliating Iraqi detainees. The pictures stirred a groundswell of revulsion around the world, especially within the Arab world where many people have been sceptical of US policy in Iraq.

Frederick was accused of having taken part in forcing a prisoner to stand on a box with wires placed on his hands – a scene displayed in one of the photos.

The charge sheet says that the prisoner was told he would be electrocuted if he fell off the box, although the wires were not connected to a power source.

He was also accused of forcing naked detainees into a pyramid position and photographing the scene. He was also alleged to have ordered detainees to masturbate in front of other prisoners and guards and then “placing one in a position so that the detainee’s face was directly in front of the genitals of another detainee” to simulate oral sex while photographing them.

Davis allegedly forced detainees into a pile “and jumped on” them, the charge sheet said. He was also accused of having stepped on prisoners’ feet and having struck one detainee “in anger”.

Davis was also accused of lying to an investigator about such incidents.

According to the same report, Davis told Army investigators he was “made to do various things that I would question morally”.

He also told investigators that military intelligence personnel appeared to approve of the abuse. “We were told they had different rules,” he told investigators, according to the report.

Before deployment in February 2003, Frederick, 37, was a corrections officer at a state prison in Virginia. His wife, Martha, also works there.

The Army report quotes testimony from a witness who said he saw Frederick hit prisoners stacked in a pile and hit a prisoner who posed no threat. The witness also reportedly testified he observed Frederick watching two inmates perform a sexual act.

In Frederick’s written accounts of conditions at Abu Ghraib prison that he sent to his family, he said his job was to prepare prisoners for interrogation and that he was told, “This is how military intelligence wants it done”. He said military intelligence officers “encouraged us and told us, ‘Great job’.”

Frederick wrote that when he questioned the acting battalion commander about harsh inmate conditions, he was told “to do as he says”.