by Lorne Cook
MANNHEIM, Germany, Aug 23 (AFP) - A military judge threatened Monday to suspend the court martial of a US soldier accused of cruelty to Iraqi prisoners if government investigators are not quick to conclude reports into the abuses.
"I will reconsider whether this case should be dismissed," the judge told lawyers representing the United States government in the pre-trial hearing of Specialist Charles Graner, a first legal step before he faces a court martial.
"The government has to figure out what they want to do with the prosecution of this case," said the no-nonsense judge, James Pohl, at the two-day procedure in Mannheim, southern Germany.
He set a deadline of October 21 for the investigators to show they had made progress in sorting through hundreds of thousands of files on a secret military computer, some of which the defence needs as evidence.
If they did not, Pohl said, legal proceedings against Graner, believed to be a ringleader in an abuse scandal that has shaken the military and the authority of the United States, could resume once the reports were finished.
Graner, referred to variously in court as corporal and specialist, is charged with cruelty and maltreatment, assault, conspiracy and dereliction of duty at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad.
The abuses took place in November and were captured on film by some of the seven people accused so far. The photographs were released by the media in April and caused widespread outrage, particularly in the Middle East.
The images showed prisoners naked in deeply humiliating positions being forced to perform sexual acts, piled in a pyramid, cowering from dogs or with electrodes attached to them.
Earlier, Graner`s lawyers had tried to stop the images from being used in a court martial by claiming that investigators had acted wrongly when they searched the accused, his room and laptop computer early last January 14.
The 35-year-old military policeman told the judge that he had been sleeping only three to four hours a night for at least a month and that he was under a lot of stress from the conflict there when he was questioned.
"Several of our platoon had taken fire ... both of my roommates had been injured in an IED (home-made bomb) blast," he said. "Many times we went out without armour, a few times we went out without doors" on the vehicles.
"It was one of the more stressful times," said Graner, who was dressed in desert combat fatigues and showed little emotion throughout the hearing.
Government lawyers told how Graner was of above average intelligence, scoring one point less than the possible maximum on his military entry examination, and that he had been trained in search and seizure procedures.
"It is simply inconceivable that the accused was not acting in a voluntary manner in this case," said Major Michael Holly.
The judge rejected the defence motion and another seeking to have the court martial, for which no date has been set, moved from Iraq to the United States.
Defence lawyers Jay Heath and Guy Womack argued it would be impossible for their client to get a fair trial in Iraq because of the nature of the photographs.
"This is the functional equivalent of a confession, almost," said Heath. "There are some suggestions that his actions have caused the deaths of other Americans."
But Pohl said it would be difficult for Graner, whose face was caught on camera smiling, arms folded behind a mound of hooded, naked Iraqi prisoners, to find a panel of judges anywhere who had not heard of the case.
Later, outside the court, Womack played down the rulings.
"We don`t really see this as a setback," said the ex-marine. "Our defence has always been that the actions at Abu Ghraib were lawful," that they were ordered from above.
The judge also heard brief submissions from lawyers for Megan Ambuhl and accepted their views on technicalities concerning two charges against her.
Pohl will hear two other suspects, Staff Sergeant Ivan Frederick and Sergeant Javal Davis, on Tuesday.