MichaelMoore.com

England talks about Iraq prisoner abuse after court martial halted

LONDON (AFP) - Lynndie England, the US soldier who posed in some of the worst Abu Ghraib prison abuse photos in Iraq, talked frankly about her part in the scandal in a television interview after her court-martial was suspended.

The 22-year-old reservist explained the background to three notorious pictures that came to symbolise the Iraq abuse scandal -- one featuring her holding a leash attached to a naked prisoner, a second of a nude pyramid of detainees and a third of her smiling and gesturing at another naked inmate.

She also said she and her one-time lover Charles Graner, another soldier and the alleged ringleader at the prison on the outskirts of Baghdad, had been led to believe that their actions were a useful part of the interrogation process.

Dressed in a blue V-necked T-shirt and looking sombre, England recalled how Graner, who fathered her seven-month-old baby, asked her in October 2003 to help him move a prisoner -- known as "Gus" -- back to his cell.

"I agreed. You always help a buddy out right if they ask," she said in the interview broadcast late Monday on the BBC's Newsnight programme.

"He had a tie on or whatever you want to call it, and he (Graner) had put it around Gus's neck and asked me to hold it so I held it and he took pictures.

"The reason behind it from what I understood was to intimidate him."

The young woman went on to describe how the following month a batch of seven newly-arrived detainees were physically abused, stripped naked and assembled on top of each other with bags over their heads, while photographs were taken.

"(At first) they were thrown in a pile, they were jumped on but not like so many times that it would break a rib or what not," England said.

"There was stomping on hands and feet. After they had been stripped and un-handcuffed they were placed in a pyramid pile by Graner."

She said he had wanted to put them in one heap rather than spaced out.

As for the third photograph, in which England gives a cheeky smile to the camera in front of a naked prisoner, the young mother said she had been talked into doing it by her "buddies".

"I just leaned in and quickly got away from him," she said.

England reiterated a claim made by other soldiers who have already been charged for abusing prisoners that their action was condoned by more senior officials at the prison.

"I was actually there when one MI (military investigator) had told Graner: You guys are doing a great job, keep it up," she said.

A brigadier general, who oversaw Abu Ghraib at the time of the abuse, also spoke out on the BBC about what happened, arguing that she and the seven low-ranking soldiers who have been fingered in the affair were the scapegoats for others higher up the military chain of command.

"Unless something interferes that is how the history books will record this," said brigadier general Janis Karpinski, who was demoted as punishment.

"Something needs to come in and interfere with that report for history because the truth is out there," she said.

The comments were broadcast less than a week after a judge declared a mistrial in England's court-martial at the Fort Hood military base in Texas after rejecting her guilty plea. The case has been returned to the US military authorities and it will be weeks or months before her fate is decided.

"I could (go to prison), I really couldn't say, I hope I don't but who knows, only God knows," said England, pictured cradling her son, Carter Allan.