Abu Ghraib servicewoman convicted

A military jury convicted US army reservist Sabrina Harman early today on all but one of the seven charges she faced for her role in abuses at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison.

A panel of four army officers and four senior enlisted soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas, convicted Harman on one count of conspiracy to maltreat detainees, four counts of maltreating detainees and one count of dereliction of duty.

The 27-year-old reservist from Lorton, Virginia, was acquitted on one maltreatment count.

Her sentencing hearing will begin later today. She faces a maximum of five and a half years in a military prison.

Harman, a former pizza shop manager, was the second soldier to be tried for allegedly mistreating prisoners at Abu Ghraib. She was depicted in several of the most notorious photos taken in late October and early November 2003 and she is accused of taking other pictures.

Harman posed for a photo with Private Charles Graner behind a group of naked detainees stacked in a pyramid. In another photo, she is shown with a prisoner on whose leg she is accused of writing the incorrectly-spelled “rapeist”.

Earlier, prosecutors said in closing arguments that Harman and other guards on the night shift at Abu Ghraib conspired to mistreat the prisoners.

“They were all acting together for their own amusement,” said Captain Chris Graveline. “There was no justification for what they did that night.”

Graveline said the group took pictures of what they were doing “so they could remember that night, so they could laugh again at these men … There’s nothing funny about what happened at Abu Ghraib.”

Defence lawyer Frank Spinner said Harman was a novice soldier who had no prison-guard experience and who received virtually no training before going to work at the chaotic and overcrowded prison as part of the Maryland-based 372nd Military Police Company.

“Shame on the army for putting an ill-equipped, ill-trained junior specialist in a position where she had to challenge her (enlisted) leadership to do the right thing,” he said, after putting on a case that lasted only a few hours. “This is not one of the Army’s finest moments.”

Six co-defendants in the Abu Ghraib case have made plea bargains. Graner was convicted in January and is now serving a 10-year sentence in an Army prison.

Private Lynndie England, the most recognisable Abu Ghraib defendant, also reached a plea deal, but the judge threw it out in early May after Graner’s testimony contradicted England’s assertion that she knew her actions were wrong.

The soldier who blew the whistle on the Abu Ghraib abuse has received a special John F Kennedy Profile in Courage Award, an award that recognises acts of political courage.

Army reservist Specialist Joseph Darby was the first to report abuse at the prison, turning over photos that showed prisoners chained together in sexual poses, piled on the floor naked and forced to form a nude human pyramid.