by Justin Cole
FORT BRAGG, North Carolina, Aug 4 (AFP) - US troops who served alongside the soldier photographed holding a naked Iraqi prisoner on a leash described her Wednesday as an undisciplined soldier who sneaked repeatedly from her quarters to visit a boyfriend.
The former supervisor of Private Lynndie England, 21, and a former room-mate were among the soldiers who testified here Wednesday on the second day of a military hearing to determine whether England should face a court-martial.
England, a US army reservist from West Virginia, could face up to 38 years in jail if convicted of abusing Iraqi detainees late last year at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad and other charges.
Her lawyers have focused on what they see as wider patterns of abuse at Abu Ghraib, where they say the chain of command was often unclear and some guards had not heard of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
England's former supervisor at Abu Ghraib painted an unflattering picture of her at Wednesday's hearing.
"She had a problem showing up at work on time," Corporal Matthew Bolinger told the court over the telephone from Fort Lee, Virginia.
"She was sneaking out in the middle of the night," he said, adding "she shouldn't have been at the hard site" of the prison where inmates were housed because she was an administrative assistant.
Bolinger told the court, as England sat impassively listening to his testimony, that he searched for her one night after she could not be found in her quarters.
"We discovered her in bed with Corporal Graner," he said in a reference to Charles Graner, another former Abu Ghraib guard who has also been charged in the abuse scandal and who appears in a number of pictures of sexually humiliation of Iraqi detainees.
England is pregnant with Graner's son.
Bolinger revealed that England, deployed to Iraq with the 372nd Military Police Company, was reprimanded several times for poor behaviour while at Abu Ghraib.
England's room-mate at the prison, Felicia Nazelrod, said England was often absent from their shared quarters at night.
"It wasn't my job to keep track of her," she told the court when questioned by the prosecution on England's whereabouts.
The soldiers gave testimony amid a wide probe into England's actions, sparked after a soldier handed in a disc containing photographs of England and other soldiers abusing detainees.
In one disturbing image, England was pictured holding a leash around the neck of a naked detainee sprawling on the floor nearby.
The defense continued to press witnesses Wednesday on their knowledge of the rules of engagement and tried to gain a clear picture of who had control over detainees at the jail.
In one exchange, jail guard Sergeant Shannon Snider, was asked by the defense if he was familiar with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
"I don't know, I've never seen it," he replied.
Asked if he had even heard of it, Snider told the court "No, Sir."
The defense believes England is a "scapegoat" for senior officers and military intelligence personnel at the prison who they say encouraged rough treatment.
"Sometimes, the US Army patch was removed and the rank was taken off," Snider said, referring to military intelligence officers inside the prison.
He said this made it difficult for the military policemen responsible for guarding the inmates to sometimes identify intelligence officers.
Asked why male detainees were often given women's underwear to wear with their orange prison jump suits, Snider told the defense:"It was mostly female underwear. That's all I could get from the CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority."
The CPA was the former US-led authority, headed by Paul Bremer, that ran Iraq prior to the return of Iraq's sovereignty in June.
The hearing is set to continue later Wednesday at Fort Bragg.