by Jennie Matthew
BAGHDAD, Sept 11 (AFP) - The first American military intelligence soldier tried for abusing naked Iraqis in Abu Ghraib prison was sentenced Saturday to eight months in prison, as US troops in Iraq marked the third anniversary of the September 11 attacks that sparked their war.
Specialist Armin J. Cruz, 24, of Plano, Texas, pleaded guilty minutes after his special court martial hearing opened but the judge's deliberations extended until Saturday afternoon.
"He has been sentenced to reduction to private, confinement for eight months and a bad-conduct discharge. His confinement location has not yet been determined," said military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Steven Boylan.
The hearing coincided with the anniversary of the attacks in 2001 on New York and Washington that resulted in nearly 3,000 people dead.
Cruz of the 502nd Military Intelligence battalion admitted ordering soldiers to force naked and handcuffed Iraqi detainees to crawl so their genitals dragged on the floor, according to the military's chargesheet.
He also confessed to conspiring with military police to cover up the abuse and to mistreating subordinates as he carried out the cover-up.
Cruz, who joined the army in September 2000, is to appeal against sentence. He had faced a maximum punishment of up to a year in jail, demotion to private, a fine of two-thirds of his salary and a bad-conduct discharge.
The abuses at Abu Ghraib prison that saw Iraqi detainees beaten and stacked naked in pyramids have been linked to a serious breakdown in the US military's detention centres after the Pentagon introduced new "get-tough" interrogation methods in the aftermath of September 11.
Initially, the White House insisted that sexual and physical mistreatment at Abu Ghraib, which rights group have said amounted to torture, was limited to the seven military police prison guards who were the first to be charged in the case.
Twenty-seven military intelligence officers have now been recommended for indictment. US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters Friday that in all at least 45 people would face court martial.
The scandal has tarred the US reputation and proved a major hurdle in its war on terror, providing a propaganda victory for the Al-Qaeda network that carried out the attacks three years ago.
US forces around Iraq held services on Saturday to mark the anniversary of the event that shattered America's sense of security in the world and paved the way for the US-led invasions of Afghanistan in October 2001 and Iraq a year and a half later.
On the ground, insurgents kept up their efforts to sabotage US-led efforts to restore security, killing an Iraqi national guard colonel and a police captain.
The police captain was killed and two of his colleagues seriously wounded when their patrol was ambushed in the southern town of Samawa, a police lieutenant said.
In Baquba, north of Baghdad, a national guard colonel, his son and driver were killed and a police captain wounded when their car came under machine-gun fire, police and medics told AFP.
Police in the town said they had captured two "Egyptian terrorists" there on Saturday while a third had escaped. The men were responsible for some of the bomb attacks carried out in the region, they said.
A police statement said a joint patrol of police and national guard had also seized 30 explosive devices ready for use, eight boxes of TNT, Kalashnivkov assault rifles and ammunition.
In the northern town of Tall Afar, the death toll from a US counter-insurgency operation launched Thursday morning rose to at least 50, including 20 policemen, medics said.
Hundreds of local residents were seen leaving the town on Saturday while senior officials called on Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi to arrange mediation to end the fighting.
An AFP journalist said families, carrying whatever they could, were leaving Tall Afar in pickup trucks of the the national guard. The town, home to some 150,000 people, was still surrounded by US troops who would not allow anyone to enter it.
Some two kilometres (one mile) outside the town, the Red Crescent had set up a camp of some 70 to 80 tents to house those fleeing, but the correspondent saw little water or food there.
In the restive town of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, US troops shot dead an Iraqi civilian and wounded another after a bomb exploded as their military convoy passed, said Dr Ahmed Oujdi at the town hospital.
Witness Amer Selman said: "I heard the noise of an explosion and then a military vehicle burst into flames and American soldiers opened fire. Two residents near their house in the area were hit."
It was not immediately possible to determine whether the bomb caused any US casualties.
In the run-up to the September 11 anniversary, a statement in the name of the Ansar (Followers of) al-Zawahiri, a group loyal to Osama bin Laden's right-hand man Ayman al-Zawahiri, had warned in a website video that US defeat in both Iraq and Afghanistan was only "a matter of time."
And on Friday, Rumsfeld said US allies and Iraqi political candidates were likely to come under attack as insurgents sought to derail January elections.
"There's no question but between now and the end of the year the terrorists are determined to try to prevent the elections from taking place and from taking place on time," he said.
There was no news of two Italian women aid workers taken hostage in Baghdad as Italian officials pressed diplomatic efforts to secure their release.