"Ringleader" gets 10 years in Abu Ghraib abuse case

FORT HOOD, Tex. — Former Army prison guard Spc. Charles A. Graner Jr. was sentenced to 10 years in a military stockade yesterday for his role in abusing Iraqi prisoners at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, but only after he spent two hours laying out a rambling but often harrowing tale of a chaotic prison where rules of permissible conduct were constantly changing.

The 10-member jury of officers and enlisted men, all combat veterans of Iraq or Afghanistan, passed sentence three hours after hearing a pre-sentencing statement by Graner, whom the Army called the ringleader of the abusive guards. In the unsworn statement, not subject to cross-examination, Graner said superior officers instructed him to take actions at the prison that he knew would "violate the Geneva Conventions."

At one point, he showed the jury a copy of the Army's "ROE," or "Rules of Engagement," which spelled out four steps of increasing severity for guards to use in controlling unruly inmates: "Shout, Shove, Show (a weapon), Shoot."

Graner also said cellblock "One-Alpha" at the crumbling, crowded Army prison housed a number of so-called "ghost detainees," prisoners held with no written records, so that International Red Cross inspectors would not be aware of them.

Photos of a grinning Graner and other reservists humiliating the Iraqi prisoners sparked worldwide outrage. Graner did not explicitly apologize yesterday, but said: "I didn't enjoy anything I did there. I did what I did. A lot of it was wrong, a lot of it was criminal."

Asked after the sentencing if he felt remorse, Graner said: "There's a war on. Bad things happen."

Throughout Graner's 4-½-day trial, prosecutors depicted him as a sadist who took great pleasure in seeing detainees suffer.

"It was for sport, for laughs," one of the prosecutors, Capt. Chris Graveline, told jurors in his closing argument Friday. "What we have here is plain abuse. There is no justification."

Graner was convicted Friday on five charges of assault, maltreatment, and conspiracy stemming from the prison scandal. He was convicted of various specific acts of abuse, including knocking a blindfolded prisoner unconscious with a punch to the head, hitting an inmate's legs with a steel rod, and forcing seven naked inmates to form a human pyramid.

In addition to 10-year prison term, out of a possible maximum of 15 years, the jury reduced Graner in rank and gave him a dishonorable discharge.

In his presentation to the jury, Graner, 36, said he was willing to accept a jail term for his offenses, but he pleaded with the jury not to discharge him from the Army. "I would ask the panel to give me that chance," he said.

The reservist from Uniontown, Pa., yesterday reiterated what other witnesses had said during his week-long trial: that numerous senior officers condoned the beatings and humiliation of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

President Bush has said that the prison abuses were strictly the fault of a few junior enlisted soldiers.

On the night shift at One-Alpha, Graner said, the Army assigned two low-ranking reservists to guard 80 to 100 prisoners, ranging from common criminals to veteran insurgents.

Graner said the guards were told to "terrorize" the inmates to make it easier for CIA agents and military intelligence officers to question them.

"They would say ... give this prisoner 30 seconds to eat," Graner recalled. "It's pitch black in your cell. I shine a light in your eyes to blind you. I haul you out, naked, and I hand you the (packed lunch) and the whole time you're trying to eat I'm screaming at you. Then time's up. 'We gave you the opportunity to eat. You just didn't eat.' "

Graner worked as a Marine military policeman and as a guard at Pennsylvania's Greene State Correctional Institution before shipping out to Iraq with the Army reserve. He boasted yesterday about his expertise as a corrections officer. "I know the Geneva Conventions, better than anyone else in my company," Graner said. "And we were called upon to violate the Geneva Conventions."

The Conventions, an international treaty covering treatment of prisoners in war zones, have been a subject of hot debate recently. Following the 9/11 attacks, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales advised the president that the U.S. could legally ignore the treaty in certain circumstances. Critics in Congress, in legal and military circles have contended that this advice filtered down through the chain of command and contributed to the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Last month, Bush nominated Gonzales to be attorney general.

Graner named a series of Army officers, ranking from lieutenant to full colonel, who gave orders, he said, to mistreat prisoners — particularly those described as "intelligence holds" who were believed to have information about the Iraqi insurgency that grew after the fall of Baghdad.

Those he named included Col. Thomas Pappas, commander of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade in charge of the prison, Lt. Col. Steven Jordan, the senior Military Intelligence officer; Capt. Donald Reese, commander of the 372nd Military Police Company; Capt. Christopher Brinson, platoon leader; and 1st Lt. Lewis Raeder, platoon leader in the military police command.

Several officers he named were also cited in sworn testimony during Graner's trial. Witnesses in Graner's court-martial said that Jordan was a regular visitor to Graner's cellblock and was aware of all the abuses that led to the criminal charges. The Army says Jordan is under investigation.

Four enlisted soldiers who worked at cellblock One-Alpha have pleaded guilty in the case. Charges are pending against two other enlisted reservists who served at the prison. None of the officers at Abu Ghraib, and no one higher in the chain of command, has faced criminal charges.

Graner's lawyer, Guy Womack, complained bitterly during the trial that the Army had not called for testimony from any of the officers who were at the prison.

"The unanswered question," Womack said after the verdict was announced, "is why won't the Army punish any of the officers who were responsible?"

Testimony at the trial suggested that several soldiers who were appalled by the treatment of the inmates were ignored or reassigned when they reported abuses to officers.

Even Spc. Joseph Darby, the whistle-blower who has been praised by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for his efforts to stop the Abu Ghraib abuses, said on the witness stand that he thought the abuses should be stopped but did not get a satisfactory response from his superiors.

So he gathered photographs, put them in a brown envelope and slipped them anonymously under the door of the Baghdad office of the Army's Criminal Investigation Division. Detectives there, independent of the chain of command, launched an inquiry.

Womack said his client and the six other Abu Ghraib guards charged with abuses were being scapegoated.

Months before the Abu Ghraib abuses became public, three Pennsylvania reservists were convicted of beating and kicking prisoners at Camp Bucca in southern Iraq. They were discharged and ordered to forfeit two months' salary.

"This is the guy [Graner] that it seems easiest for us to blame," said Beth Hillman, a specialist on military justice at Rutgers University School of Law. "That doesn't mean there aren't other people who should pay a price for their role in making this possible."

Material from The Dallas Morning-News, The Associated Press and Los Angeles Times is included in this report.