US: US President George W. Bush and his Secretary of Defence, Mr Donald Rumsfeld, should take the stand at the trial of a US soldier charged with abusing prisoners in Iraq, the soldier's lawyer said yesterday.
Policies adopted in Mr Bush's "war on terror" created a climate that encouraged cruelty, said lawyers for US soldiers accused of subjecting detainees to sexual humiliation and physical abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.
"No one can suggest with a straight face that the MPs [military police\] acted alone," said defence lawyer Mr Guy Womack, representing Specialist Charles Graner, who faces the most serious charges of the soldiers to be court-martialled.
"They were directly under the supervision of military intelligence officers," he told reporters after a pretrial hearing in Baghdad. Pretrial hearings were held yesterday for Specialist Graner and Sgt Javal Davis.
Sgt Davis's defence counsel, Mr Paul Bergrin, said Mr Bush and Mr Rumsfeld had sidestepped the Geneva Convention, encouraging abuse that stretched down the chain of command to the soldiers at Abu Ghraib. He said his client - who is accused of jumping on a pile of prisoners and stamping on their feet - was instructed on a daily basis to soften up Iraqi prisoners to obtain intelligence.
Mr Bergrin said he would seek to put both Mr Bush and Mr Rumsfeld on the stand as witnesses.
During yesterday's hearing, the US military judge handling the case agreed to Mr Bergrin's request to question top American generals, whose testimonies the defence counsel hopes to use to show abuses were sanctioned from the top.
Judge Col James Pohl said Central Command chief Gen John Abizaid and Iraq commander Lieut Gen Ricardo Sanchez and others could be interviewed.
The US army, keen to demonstrate it is weeding out the culprits, has charged seven low-ranking suspects in relation to abuse at Abu Ghraib, which officials have blamed on a few wayward individuals.
Col Pohl ordered the prison be preserved as a "crime scene", despite an offer by Mr Bush to tear down the building.
Mr Bergrin said he wanted to take members of the jury to the jail so they could experience the conditions soldiers were working under.
"We want the court members to smell the faecal matter and the urine that service members who worked inside that prison and who are accused in this case had to live with," he said.
No date has been set for the start of any trial for the three defendants, who have yet to plead.
Specialist Graner could be sentenced to up to 24½ years in jail if convicted.
He is accused of photographing a detainee being dragged on a leash, and posing for a picture by a pile of naked detainees. Graner is also charged with making prisoners strip and masturbate in front of each other, and forcing one detainee to simulate oral sex on another, before taking a picture.
One soldier, Specialist Jeremy Sivits, has already been sentenced to a year in prison after admitting abuse charges.