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US soldier guilty of abuse
17/05/2005 14:40 - (SA)
Washington - A United States military policewoman behind some of the most ghastly photographs from Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison was found guilty on Monday of severely abusing inmates and failing to carry out her army duties, said a military spokesperson.
Specialist Sabrina Harman was convicted on six out of seven counts against her, including charges of maltreatment of detainees, conspiracy to maltreat detainees and dereliction of duty.
A military jury of four officers and four enlisted servicemen seated in Fort Hood, Texas, however, acquitted her on one maltreatment charge.
Base spokesperson James Wittmeyer said: "The substance of it is that based on the verdict, the maximum sentence that could be judged against her would be five and a half years versus the six and an half years, had she been shown guilty on all the specifications."
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A former pizza parlour manager from outside the US capital, 27-year-old Harman is credited with engineering one of the most famous pictures from Abu Ghraib that showed a hooded inmate in rags standing on a box with electrical wires attached to his hands.
The picture, reproduced in all major newspapers around the world, became a symbol of the scandal that prompted apologies from defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and assurances from President George W Bush that such abuse of detainees would never be tolerated.
She also posed behind a pyramid of naked Iraqi prisoners, giving a thumbs-up in front of a corpse wrapped in plastic, and writing the misspelled word "rapist" on the leg on one of the inmates.
Wittmayer said Harman showed no emotion as the verdict was read, but under existing military rules, it would be automatically appealed.
Prison guards 'under pressure'
The sentencing phase of her trial was due to begin on Tuesday.
Like most other soldiers involved in the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal, Harman insisted that prison guards from the 372nd military police company had been under pressure from military intelligence officers, who wanted the inmates "softened" before their interrogation in order to make them more co-operative.
She was quoted as describing the rules allegedly introduced at the prison by US military authorities: "Sleep, food, clothes, mattresses, cigarettes were all privileges and were granted with information received."
Her lawyers insisted Harman, a reservist, was rushed into Iraq without proper training in handling detainees, or being fully apprised of the many legal issues involved in the process.
In a bid to show her remorse, they introduced a letter written by Harman to her former roommate in Virginia two years ago, in which she expressed concern that the prison guard team was "going too far."
- AFP
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