FORT HOOD, Texas - Lynndie England, the US private who achieved notoriety by being photographed holding a leash on a naked Iraqi inmate at the Abu Ghraib prison, pled guilty to abuse charges Monday at her court martial.
The 22-year-old private, who reached a plea bargain with military prosecutors, asked for the sentence to be decided by a panel of enlisted troops and officers.
Wearing a full dress uniform, England made no comment as she walked into the court. During the hearing she said nothing but "yes sir" in response to the judge's questions.
England pled guilty to seven charges. The prosecution dropped a dereliction of duty charge and one of committing an indecent act when she was photographed performing fellatio on another solider.
That brings the maximum sentence she risks down to 11 years from the original 16-and-a-half years.
Her defense asked the judge to roll several maltreatment charges into one, which would bring the maximum sentence down to eight years.
At the start of the trial, England's lawyer, Rick Hernandez, asked the military judge, Colonel James Pohl, to recuse himself because he had presided over all the other Abu Ghraib abuse cases. Hernandez said this "gives the appearance of bias."
Pohl became increasingly frustrated under defense questioning and at one stage told Hernandez that in order to stand down: "I'd have to believe there was an appearance of impropriety from two colonels and two three-star generals."
The judge rejected the demand and England went on to make her plea.
The proposed punishment agreed with prosecutors in her plea bargain will remain secret until after the military jury decides the sentence it believes she should face. England will then receive the lesser of the two sentences.
In charges filed in February, England was accused of posing for a number of photographs in which prisoners were abused.
In one, she held a strap tied around a naked detainee's neck as he crawled on the ground.
In another, she pointed to the word "rapeist" (sic) written on the exposed buttocks of a prisoner. She also posed with naked prisoners who formed a human pyramid and pointed at the "naked genital area" of a prisoner sitting on the back of another detainee.
England also posed with detainees who had been forced to masturbate and was also photographed engaging in fellatio with Specialist Charles Graner, the father of her newborn baby. Staff Sergeant Ivan Frederick took the pictures.
Graner, who is serving a 10-year jail term for beating and sexually humiliating prisoners, is reported to have married another soldier charged in the scandal, Megan Ambuhl. Ambuhl pleaded guilty and received a dishonorable discharge.
Of the eight soldiers charged over the Abu Ghraib scandal, which brought international condemnation of US practices in Iraq as it sought to bring the country under control after the 2003 invasion, only one has gone to trial.
Five soldiers pled guilty and received sentences ranging from a dishonorable discharge to eight years in prison. Only Graner's case has gone to a court martial. The military trial of the remaining soldier charged, Specialist Sabrina Harman, is scheduled to begin May 11.
A number of US investigations categorized the abuse as the isolated acts by a small group. But many groups have raised suspicions that the US administration has protected the upper ranks.
The most senior soldier charged in the scandal was Frederick, who was sentenced to eight years in prison after he pled guilty.
Other officers received nonjudicial punishment, including Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, commander of the military police unit accused of mistreating prisoners. She was relieved of her command and reprimanded.
The senior US military commander in Iraq at the time the scandal broke, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, and three other high-ranking officers were cleared of any wrongdoing by a US military probe which published results last week.
Opposition Democrat Edward Kennedy lamented in the US Senate last month that investigations have led to punishment for a few "conveniently lower-rank soldiers," while the administration chose to "insulate the civilian leadership from responsibility."
US rights groups have called for a special prosecutor to look into prisoner torture allegations.

05/02/2005 16:06 GMT