IRAQ: An American army guard at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad was sentenced to eight years' imprisonment yesterday after pleading guilty to physical and sexual abuse of Iraqi detainees held there.
His trial heard evidence of high-level US military and CIA involvement in the abuse. The evidence, from an officer and a chief warrant officer who served at the jail, is among the strongest so far in the Abu Ghraib trials pointing to more senior involvement in the abuse and direct orders from above to "soften up" detainees.
Previously, the Pentagon has claimed that the sexual and physical abuse at the prison was the work of a few "bad apples" acting on their own initiative.
Testifying in the court-martial of Staff Sgt Ivan Frederick, who was charged with five accounts of abusing prisoners, Capt Donald Reese, a military police commander at Abu Ghraib, said the CIA was involved in abusing detainees.
He said US civilian "OGA" officials - an acronym meaning Other Government Agency reserved for the CIA - interrogated Iraqi inmates at night, when supervision at the prison was low. One inmate, whom CIA interrogators were depriving of sleep, was suffering from "panic attacks", he said.
"They [ CIA agents] came in at any time of day. They came in through the back door and put [ prisoners] in one of the cells. We were told by OGA that they'd be back for them again later," Capt Reese said via video from the United States on Wednesday.
Yesterday Judge Col James Pohl sentenced Staff Sgt Frederick (38) to 10 years' imprisonment, with two deducted in a plea-bargain arrangement, as well as a reduction in rank to private, forfeiture of pay and a dishonourable discharge.
It was the toughest sentence in three convictions to date related to degrading abuses at Abu Ghraib exposed with the publication in April of photographs that outraged the world.
Frederick's lawyer, Mr Gary Myers, called the sentence excessive and said he intended to appeal to seek a reduction. Frederick admitted punching one detainee so hard in the chest that he needed resuscitation. A prison guard in civilian life, Frederick was the US officer who attached wires to another man, telling him he could be electrocuted if he stepped off a box. A photograph of this incident became emblematic of the Abu Ghraib scandal.
In one of the most notorious incidents linked to the charges, naked prisoners were also made to form a human pyramid.
Maj Michael Holley, the military prosecutor, told the court Frederick was an adult able to tell right from wrong. "How much training do you need to learn that it's wrong to force a man to masturbate?" he asked.
Mr Myers said that, while it was right to punish Frederick, the military establishment must share the responsibility.
"Punish him, yes. But please try to understand the defence's point of view that there is corporate responsibility," he said.
Two other US soldiers have previously been sentenced to between eight months and a year in jail after pleading guilty to abuses at Abu Ghraib, a jail notorious for executions and torture under Saddam Hussein. Five more face courts-martial.