U.S. Army SPC Charles Graner

Abu Ghraib Abuse Leader Found Guilty 

Aljazeera (Qatar) 14jan05

[Washington Post & Baltimore Sun articles below]

The abuse shocked the world and shamed the United States

The US soldier who led a band of sadistic guards in abusing prisoners at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib has been found guilty by a military court.

Army Reservist Charles Graner stood at attention and looked straight ahead without any visible reaction as the 10-member jury read its verdict on Friday. He held his hands tightly clenched.

Because the jury altered one count to a lesser charge of assault, rather than use of force likely to produce death or grievous bodily harm, his maximum sentence was lessened to 15 years from a possible seventeen-and-a-half-years, a prosecution spokesman said.

The jury took less than five hours to reach the verdict.

The verdict came after a five-day trial in which prosecutors depicted Graner as a sadistic soldier who took great pleasure in seeing detainees suffer. He was accused of stacking naked prisoners in a human pyramid and later ordering them to masturbate while other soldiers took photographs.

Brutalities

Graner also allegedly punched one man in the head hard enough to knock him out, and struck an injured prisoner with a collapsible metal stick.

The jury of four Army officers and six senior enlisted men rejected the defence argument that Graner and other prison guards were merely following orders from intelligence agents at Abu Ghraib to soften up the detainees for interrogation.

Graner, 36, was convicted of conspiracy, assault, maltreating prisoners, dereliction of duty and committing indecent acts.

source: http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/F72B561E-3161-4964-96C7-E3D6B5ED4A9B.htm 14jan05

Guard Convicted In the First Case From Abu Ghraib:
Graner Faces 15 Years for Abusing Iraqis

T.R. REID / Washington Post 15jan05

FORT HOOD, Tex., Jan. 14 -- In the first full-scale court-martial stemming from the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, a military jury Friday convicted Army Reserve Spec. Charles A. Graner Jr. on five counts of assault, maltreatment and conspiracy in connection with the beating and humiliation of Iraqi detainees.

The 10-member jury, composed of both officers and enlisted men, spent less than five hours deliberating and rejected Graner's defense that he was just following orders. Graner had been charged with smashing inmates with a steel rod and forcing naked men to simulate sexual acts. Photographs of the abuse were published by news organizations, triggering anti-American fury around the world.

Graner stood at attention and looked straight ahead, showing no emotion, as the guilty verdicts were announced. His parents, Irma Graner and Charles Graner Sr., hugged each other tightly on the spectator bench of the austere military courtroom.

The 36-year-old prison guard from Uniontown, Pa., also was acquitted of some of the specific allegations within the charges and now faces up to 15 years in a military prison. A sentencing hearing began Friday and was scheduled to continue on Saturday.

The defense maintained that Graner, who was a corporal and has since been demoted, and the other low-ranking enlisted soldiers indicted in the case were scapegoats set up by the Army to deflect blame from senior offices in charge of the prison. No officer at Abu Ghraib, and no one higher in the chain of command, has faced criminal charges to date.

That discrepancy became the core defense argument at the court-martial. Defense attorney Guy Womack reiterated the point in closing arguments Friday. "The government is asking a corporal to take the hit for them," Womack said.

"The chain of command says, 'We didn't know anything about this stuff,' " he continued. "You know that is a lie."

Four others stationed at Abu Ghraib have pleaded guilty to charges resulting from the abuse; three were sentenced to prison terms, and one was reduced in rank. Two more face trials in the next two months.

The abuse described in Graner's week-long trial took place in the fall of 2003 and the winter of 2003-04 at Abu Ghraib, a crumbling Saddam Hussein-era prison near Baghdad that U.S. forces took over for lack of a better detention facility.

Between 80 and 100 of the toughest prisoners, including insurgents arrested for attacking Americans, were held in a cellblock called "Tier One-Alpha." Graner, who had been a corrections officer in Pennsylvania, was in charge of the night shift on that block, with one other reservist on hand to assist. Testimony showed that prisoners there were kept naked much of the time, with hoods over their heads, and often chained to the bars in painful "stress positions."

Inmates and U.S. soldiers testified that Army guards regularly beat the prisoners with fists or iron rods, forced them to eat food from a toilet, confronted them with unmuzzled police dogs, and made them wallow naked in the mud outside in near-freezing temperatures.

Sexual humiliation was another common practice on One-Alpha, witnesses said. Naked men were required to masturbate and to simulate homosexual sex, while female American soldiers were instructed by officers to take pictures and shout abuse. One of the specific charges of "maltreatment" brought against Graner involved an inmate nicknamed "Gus." When he was causing trouble for the guards, prosecutors said, Graner tied a leash around his neck and made him crawl like a dog.

The abuse was photographed by the guards. The pictures were posted on the walls and on the office computer screen.

Graner and other guards e-mailed the photos to family and friends, a practice that drew conflicting explanations at the trial. The prosecutor, Capt. Chris Graveline, said that displaying the photos showed just how "cold" the enlisted soldiers had been. Womack, the defense lawyer, responded that Graner's sending the photos to friends proved "he was sure he was doing exactly what the chain of command wanted him to do."

When those photos were passed to CBS News, the New Yorker magazine and The Washington Post in the spring of 2004, Abu Ghraib became a media phenomenon around the world. Muslim extremists used the chilling prison pictures to recruit anti-American fighters. "Abu Ghraib is a shot in the arm for the extremists," said Farooq Sobhan, former foreign secretary and U.N. ambassador of Bangladesh.

A militant group in Iraq specifically cited Abu Ghraib in May when it captured and beheaded Nicholas Berg, a Pennsylvania businessman. "The dignity of Muslim men and women in Abu Ghraib . . . is not redeemed except by blood," the militants said.

The angry global reaction embarrassed the White House. President Bush summoned Arab reporters to assure them that Abu Ghraib "is a stain on our country's honor." The president and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld have said that the abuse was strictly the fault of a small group of "rogue" soldiers at the prison.

Two Defense Department inquiries revealed dramatic leadership failures at Abu Ghraib. An Army investigation found that senior officers failed to supervise subordinates and ignored signs of abuse. That report found the officers "responsible" for the mistreatment but not "culpable" because they were not directly involved in the abuse.

Testimony at Graner's trial -- the first full court-martial to probe the prison scandal -- suggested that numerous officers were aware of the goings-on in cellblock One-Alpha. On Nov. 16, 2003, after most of the specific incidents for which Graner was tried, a superior officer informed Graner in writing that "You are doing a fine job. . . . You have received many accolades from the chain of command and particularly from Lt. Col. Jordan." Lt. Col. Steven Jordan was the chief intelligence officer at the prison, and during this week's court-martial the Army said he is under investigation in connection with the scandal.

In a court-martial, "obedience to orders" is a defense to a charge of misconduct, as long as the soldier reasonably believed the order to be lawful. But Graner's attempt to exploit that defense at trial was largely stifled by the judge, Army Col. James L. Pohl. Pohl refused to allow witnesses to discuss which officers were aware of events in cellblock Alpha One, or what orders they had given. He said any testimony about what the officers knew or said would be inadmissible hearsay evidence.

In Womack's final argument to the jury Friday, the lawyer blasted the government for "hiding" the role of superior officers. "Not one witness from the chain of command came to this proceeding," he said. "Do you think the prosecutors just forgot to call those officers?"

Page A01

source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A9343-2005Jan14?language=printer 14jan05

Defense in court-martial rests with Graner silent:
Jury expected to begin deliberating today in case of abuse at Iraqi prison

GAIL GIBSON / The Baltimore Sun 14jan05

FORT HOOD, Texas - Lawyers for Army Spc. Charles A. Graner Jr. abruptly rested their case yesterday, without calling Graner or any senior officers to shed new light on the prison abuse scandal in which he was portrayed as the grinning, sadistic ringleader.

A 10-man military jury is expected to begin deliberations today in Graner's case, the first contested court-martial in the scandal ignited last spring by photos showing naked and hooded Iraqi detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison enduring humiliating abuses at the hands of U.S. soldiers.

Graner, 36, a former civilian prison guard from Uniontown, Pa., had been expected to testify in his own defense. But his lead attorney, Guy Womack, said they showed through other witnesses how intelligence operatives ran the prison and ordered Graner and other military police guards to "soften up" detainees for questioning.

"I feel fantastic," Graner said, giving his mother a quick hug after the defense closed its case. "I'm still smiling."

Acting under orders

At the heart of Graner's defense is his claim that he believed he was acting under legal orders - a legitimate defense in military court, even if the orders actually were unlawful.

But in testimony this week, Graner's lawyers struggled to show that military or civilian interrogators at Abu Ghraib ever condoned the kind of abuses that Graner is charged with - piling naked prisoners into a pyramid, for instance, putting a leather leash around the neck of a detainee or punching a prisoner in the side of the head.

Graner's lawyers could not call many of the senior military leaders they had hoped to present as witnesses. Many potential witnesses refused to testify by invoking their right against self-incrimination and others, including top Pentagon officials, were deemed irrelevant by the presiding judge.

The result was a trial that was focused mainly on the abusive acts of one night at the prison and yielded few new details about the scope of the abuses.

In Washington yesterday, the head of the international group Human Rights Watch said the Bush administration should appoint a special prosecutor to investigate detainee abuses in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in an effort regain international credibility.

"The U.S. government is less and less able to push for justice abroad because it's unwilling to see justice done at home," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch.

At Graner's trial, several of his fellow soldiers and three detainees offered a harsh view of life inside Abu Ghraib. Military police guards said intelligence soldiers would direct them to keep detainees naked in their cells, restrict their food, keep them awake and subject them to cold showers or strenuous physical exercises.

One guard who worked closely with Graner on the night shift at the Iraqi prison testified that interrogators regularly told military police guards they needed to help "break" detainees to get intelligence that could protect American soldiers in Iraq.

"We were helping to save the lives of soldiers who were outside the [prison] wires," said former Spc. Megan M. Ambuhl, who served with Graner in the Western Maryland-based 372nd Military Police Company and who was discharged from the military after pleading guilty in the Abu Ghraib scandal to a dereliction of duty charge.

But Ambuhl, like virtually every other witness called by Graner's lawyers, proved almost as useful to the government as to Graner's defense.

Sexual encounters

Under questioning by a military prosecutor, Ambuhl said she had a brief sexual relationship with Graner while they were at Abu Ghraib. She also acknowledged sending Graner an e-mail last April that contained the header, "Study finds frequent sex raises cancer risk" and writing in the text of the message: "We could have died last night."

"You don't want your friend to go to jail, do you?" the prosecutor, Maj. Michael Holley, asked Ambuhl at one point.

"No, sir," Ambuhl quietly replied.

Graner, who faces 17 1/2 years behind bars if he is convicted on the charges of conspiracy, maltreatment, assault, indecent acts and dereliction of duty, also had a sexual relationship with another member of the 372nd, Pfc. Lynndie R. England, while the unit was stationed at Abu Ghraib.

England gave birth last fall to a son that Graner is believed to have fathered. She and two other soldiers from the 372nd, Sgt. Javal Davis and Spc. Sabrina Harman, are expected to stand trial at Fort Hood this year.

source: http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.graner14jan14,0,2129734,print.story?coll=sfla-newsnation-front 14jan05