WASHINGTON, Sept 26 (AFP) - An American woman who became the face of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison by posing for a photograph while holding a naked Iraqi inmate on a leash will face a court-martial on charges of prisoner maltreatment, one of her lawyers said Sunday.
"They are moving ahead with a court-martial," attorney Rhidian Orr told AFP in a brief telephone interview from his office in Denver, Colorado.
The legal team representing Private First Class Lynndie England had received preliminary notification of the decision by military authorities, Orr said.
A formal announcement was set to be made at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, on Monday, Orr said, adding that the trial has been scheduled to begin on January 15, also at Fort Bragg.
England, 21, an Army reservist who served with a military police company in Iraq, was propelled to into the limelight in late April following publication of photographs showing Iraqi inmates at Abu Ghraib crouching in front of their US guards in sexually humiliating poses, being chained to cell doors and cowering in front of snarling guard dogs.
The female soldier, who grew up in West Virginia and is currently pregnant, was seen in a number of the pictures described by top US officials and members of Congress as "disgusting."
Her most famous picture shows the camouflage-clad private impassively holding a dog's leash attached to a collared male Iraqi detainee lying naked on the cement prison floor.
England and her lawyers have insisted she was just carrying out orders from her superiors who wanted the inmates, many of whom were suspected Iraqi insurgents, "softened up" before interrogation my military intelligence.
In an interview with a KCNC local television news, England said that military police at Abu Ghraib focused on "doing what youre told."
"I guess it just goes with stuff that happens during wartime," she said.
But top US military officials attributed the abuse to a breakdown of discipline within the 372nd Military Police company, and charged seven of its members in the case.
Defense attorneys have pointed out, however, that their argument has been significantly boosted by two recent high-profile reports, which asserted that responsibility for Abu Ghraib abuse went up to the highest levels at the Pentagon and implicated up to 27 military intelligence officers in the abuse.
Orr did not specify what charges England will face during her court-martial. But other legal experts said the military was most likely to pursue her for conspiracy to maltreat prisoners and assault.
She has also been charged with inflicting sexual, physical and psychological abuse on Iraqi prisoners.
A preliminary hearing into England's case held at Fort Bragg last month has produced a parade of witnesses who insisted the woman abused the Iraqis with gusto and showed little compunction about her behavior.
According to Private Jeremy Sivits, another member of the police company, England and other guards "were stomping on the fingers and toes of detainees," making lewd comments about male prisoners and taking sexually explicit pictures.
Colonel Denise Arn, the military judge who presided over the hearings, submitted her sealed recommendations to the commander the 18th Airborne Corps, Lieutenant General John Vines, earlier this month. Vines has the last word in the case.