First Iraqi prison scandal court-martial date set

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A 24-year-old U.S. military policeman will be the first soldier to face a court-martial in connection with the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison, the military said Sunday.\nSpc. Jeremy C. Sivits of Hyndman, Pa., a member of the 372nd Military Police Company, will stand trial in Baghdad May 19, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said. The proceedings will be open to media coverage.\nSivits is believed to have taken some of the photos that triggered the worldwide scandal over America's treatment of Iraqi prisoners. His father, Daniel Sivits, said last month that his son "was told to take a picture and he did what he was told."\nHe has been charged with conspiracy to maltreat subordinates and detainees, dereliction of duty for negligently failing to protect detainees from abuse and cruelty and maltreatment of detainees, Kimmitt said.\nIf convicted of all charges, Sivits could face one year in prison, reduction in rank to private, forfeiture of two-thirds of his pay for a year, a fine or a bad conduct discharge, military officials said. Penalties could include only one, all or any combination of those punishments, they added.\nSeven soldiers, including Sivits, face criminal charges for alleged abuse of Iraqi prisoners. Sivits is the first soldier whose trial date has been set.\nSivits faces a bad conduct court-martial. At least some of those charged will likely face general courts-martial, which can bring more severe punishments -- suggesting that he is considered to have played a lesser role in the abuses.\nBy trying him first, the military may be seeking to lay the legal foundation for future prosecutions.\nPresident Bush vowed Saturday that "we will learn all the facts and determine the full extent of these abuses. Those involved will be identified. They will answer for their actions."\nThe Army trained Sivits as a truck mechanic, not as a prison guard, his father said. U.S. officials have acknowledged problems with training and leadership among the MPs at the prison, where Saddam Hussein's regime tortured and executed its opponents.\nU.S. officials have insisted that the abuses at Abu Ghraib were carried out by a handful of soldiers who failed to follow procedures and were not part of a systematic program of brutality.\n"It is not much larger than the people already suspended, in the number of people already charged," Kimmitt said. "We may see more people involved. We still think this is still a very small number of guards involved."\n"Please don't paint with such a wide brush that it indicts the other 135,000 American soldiers and Marines out there doing the right thing," he said.\nU.S. military and civilian leaders have repeatedly said that the shocking acts depicted in widely circulated photographs of prisoners being sexually humiliated at the Abu Ghraib detention compound are gross violations of military regulations about the handling of prisoners.\nThey also say even if MPs were led poorly and trained inadequately for the jobs they were assigned at Abu Ghraib and other detention centers in Iraq, as an Army probe revealed as early as last fall, they should have known that inflicting physical and sexual abuse was wrong.\nIt remains unclear, however, whether the abuse was linked to pressure from military intelligence units responsible for prisoner interrogations to push the bounds of civilized conduct to make prisoners more compliant under questioning.\nOne of the soldiers facing charges, Spc. Sabrina Harman, said she and other members of the 372nd Military Police Company took direction from Army military intelligence officers, CIA operatives and civilian contractors who conducted interrogations.\nHarman told The Washington Post in an e-mail from Baghdad it was made clear that her mission was to break down the prisoners.\n"They would bring in one to several prisoners at a time already hooded and cuffed," Harman said. "The job of the MP was to keep them awake, make it hell so they would talk."\nHarman, 26, is one of two smiling soldiers seen in a photo taken at Abu Ghraib as they stand behind naked, hooded Iraqi prisoners stacked in a pyramid.\nOn Saturday, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the head of U.S. detention centers in Iraq, said the military has no plans to close Abu Ghraib, and he blamed the abuse of detainees there on poor leadership and disregard for the rules.\nThe United States does intend to cut the number of prisoners to help improve conditions but added that "we will continue to conduct interrogation missions at the Abu Ghraib facility," Miller said.\nKimmitt said Sunday that 325 prisoners had been released from various detention centers over the past two weeks.\nIraqi Governing Council member Ahmad Chalabi criticized the decision to keep Abu Ghraib -- the site of executions and torture under Saddam Hussein's regime -- in operation.\n"I think it should have been erased to the ground, or at least turned into a museum. It's a horrible place with horrible connotations, and I think it should be erased to the ground now," he said Sunday on CNN's "Late Edition"