BAGHDAD, Oct 22 (AFP) - Preliminary court martial proceedings were held Friday for two US jail guards accused of physical and sexual abuse of Iraqi detainees in Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison.
Facing a maximum 28-year-prison sentence, Specialist Charles Graner, who posed in a notorious photograph with naked Iraqi detainees stacked in a pyramid last autumn, sat clean shaven in court with his two attorneys, Guy Womack and Jay Heath.
The preliminary hearing saw the judge, Colonel James Pohl, reject two requests from the defense and schedule the next court date for December 3 and the actual trial itself for January 7.
Pohl turned down a request from the defense attorneys for an expert psychologist who participated in a landmark 1971 study at Stanford University in California on prison abuse.
Instead, Pohl said the government would provide a psychologist to work with the 36-year-old Graner within a week.
Pohl also struck down a request by the attorneys to grant immunity to witnesses, who might otherwise refuse to testify for fear of self-incrimination about the events last autumn at the prison on the edge of Baghdad.
The hearing followed Thursday's sentencing of the most senior US soldier charged so far in the case, Staff Sergeant Ivan Frederick, to eight years in prison.
Graner's attorney painted a portrait of a low-ranking soldier simply following orders from top brass and falling victim to the new get-tough measures employed by interrogators as part of the US-led "war on terror" in Afghanistan and Iraq.
"We are going to win. He was acting under fully lawful orders at the time," Womack told AFP.
Womack claimed Graner's "orders had been given to him by his superiors in the military police chain of command, military intelligence and civilian intelligence."
The defense also said it wanted to summon Colonel Thomas Pappas, the head of the 205th military intelligence brigade assigned to Abu Ghraib. Pappas has been implicated in at least two Pentagon probes for involvement in the scandal, although he has not been formally indicted.
The lawyers of the second man hauled before court later Friday -- Sergeant Javal Davis -- depicted their 26-year-old client as a pawn implementing orders, in his three-hour afternoon session.
"Our position is that there was legally improper and unlawful command influence at the highest level," attorney Paul Bergrin told AFP.
But the court also threw out Davis' request to force US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his intelligence deputy Stephen Cambone to sit down for questioning.
The sergeant faces up to eight-and-a-half years in prison on seven charges including assault, dereliction of duty, maltreatment of detainees and conspiracy.
The judge adjourned the court until December 4 when the defense is expected to submit a motion to request the trial be moved to the United States. The witness roll has to be handed to the court by November 20, Pohl said.
The actual trial was tentatively scheduled for February 1.
Bergrin told AFP that since June he had conducted interviews with the former US military commander in Iraq, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez; the number two general in Iraq, Lieutenant General Thomas Metz; the former military intelligence chief in Iraq, Major General Barbara Fast; and Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, the former coalition spokesman.
Bergrin claimed his interviews pointed the finger at Rumsfeld and Cambone as the ones to blame for the prison scandal.
"Every general before he came to Iraq and while they were in Iraq had meetings with Rumsfeld and Carbone and had explicit conversations about actionable intelligence and improving interrogation techniques."
So far seven prison guards have been charged in the scandal. Along with Frederick, Specialist James Sivits pleaded guilty in May and was sentenced to a year in prison.
Specialist Armin Cruz of military intelligence was sentenced last month to eight months in prison.
Forty-five people have been referred for court martials in connection with the Abu Ghraib scandal, Rumsfeld said in September.
10/22/2004 15:55 GMT - AFP