May 15, 2004 By Staff And Wire Reports 6 min read

A Uniontown man, whose smiling face and thumbs-up sign behind a pile of naked Iraqi detainees has made him internationally notorious, will face court-martial, or military trial, for allegedly abusing the prisoners. On Friday, the U.S. Army charged Military Police Cpl. Charles A. Graner, 35, with conspiracy to maltreat detainees, dereliction of duty for woefully failing to protect detainees from abuse, maltreatment of detainees, assaulting detainees, committing indecent acts, adultery and obstruction of justice. He will be arraigned May 20, but no trial date has been set.

Graner, a guard at the State Correctional Institution at Greene before his deployment, is one of several charged in the Abu Ghraib detention center scandal.

Allegations against several of the guards in the prison came to light after another guard tipped authorities that abuses were occurring. Numerous pictures have surfaced over the past month, many of which show Iraqis in sexually degrading positions.

Spc. Jeremy Sivits of Hyndman, also charged in the scandal, is cooperating with prosecutors and faces lesser charges. In newspaper reports, Sivits alleged that soldiers laughed and joked as they beat, stripped and sexually humiliated detainees.

Sivits’ statements are the most in-depth descriptions of the abuse by a defendant to have been made public.

In one instance, a prisoner handcuffed to a bed with bullet wounds in his legs screamed “Mister, mister, please stop,” as Graner struck him with a police baton, according to statements Sivits made to military investigators.

Guy Womack, an attorney for Graner, told the Associated Press that Sivits’ statement was of questionable value because he appeared to have agreed to a plea bargain with authorities.

Sivits described Graner as one of the ringleaders of the abuse. Graner was joking, laughing, angered and “acting like he was enjoying it,” Sivits said.

He said Graner once punched a detainee in the head so hard the man fell unconscious.

Womack said he doubted Graner would have hit a detainee.

“I don’t think he was that kind of guy,” Womack told the New York Times. “He would have done it if he was ordered to do it.”

Womack said that military intelligence soldiers were in one of the graphic photographs, indicating that they were aware of what was going on.

Womack earlier told the Herald-Standard that Graner was only following orders when he posed for staged photos with nude Iraqi prisoners. He claimed the photos were staged and the guards were told to pose for pictures.

Womack did not return calls to his Houston, Texas, law offices Friday.

The Abu Ghraib facility was strictly used as a prison until the fall of 2003. That’s when Graner’s unit, the 372nd Military Police Company, 800th MP Brigade from Cumberland, Md., was assigned there. At that point, it became a “point of interrogation of Iraqis who we thought had information we needed,” Womack told the Herald-Standard.

Sivits told military investigators that higher-ups in the chain of command did not authorize the mistreatment. “Our command would have slammed us,” he said. “They believe in doing the right thing. If they saw what was going on, there would have been hell to pay.”

“I was laughing at some of the stuff that they had them do,” Sivits told investigators in January. “I was disgusted at some of the stuff, as well.”

Transcripts of Sivits’ statements were provided to the Washington Post by Harvey Volzer, a lawyer representing Spc. Megan M. Ambuhl, another soldier charged in the case. The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, which also cited investigative documents, did not name the source who provided them.

Ambuhl was the only soldier whom Sivits did not accuse of wrongdoing in the statements.

The other guards facing charges have said they acted on orders from superiors or from military intelligence, and all six have declared their innocence.

Sgt. Ivan L. “Chip” Frederick II forced naked detainees to masturbate, showing them how to do it “right,” and seemed to enjoy watching the prisoners beaten, Sivits said.

Sivits said Sgt. Javal Davis threw himself on a pile of prisoners and “then stomped on either the fingers or toes of the detainees,” as they screamed in pain.

Paul Bergrin, a Newark, N.J., lawyer representing Davis, said Sivits’ statement was “fabricated” and “self-serving.”

“This is in order to cover up for his own misdeeds and mischievous behavior,” he told the Post.

In a telephone interview broadcast Friday from Camp Victory in Baghdad where he is being held, Davis told ABC that military intelligence personnel, who “ran the area where the incidents happened,” ordered him to “loosen up” the detainees to prepare them to be interrogated.

Davis acknowledged stepping on prisoners’ hands and fingers and said he could have refused to physically abuse the prisoners.

“I could have said no to anything, but I would have been disobeying an order,” he told ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “So you can either get in trouble for not doing what you’re told or get in trouble for doing what you’re told. It’s kind of like a Catch-22. But it’s my choice to make a decision what I consider would be the right thing to do or not.”

ABC said Davis called the program to talk about what happened. His parents also appeared on the show.

Bill Lawson, Frederick’s uncle, told the Post that Frederick “shoved” one prisoner who was trying to “start some kind of a scuffle.” Frederick has maintained that “he has never lifted a finger against any prisoner in Iraq,” Lawson said.

Sivits said Spc. Sabrina Harman and Pfc. Lynndie England, who is pregnant with Graner’s child, smiled in some of the pictures, but that Harman sometimes “had a look of disgust on her face.”

Harman wrote the word “rapist” on the leg of one inmate after she learned he had raped someone, he said.

Sivits said he was told not to report the abuse.

“I was asked not to,” he said. “And I try to be friends with everyone. I see now where trying to be friends with everyone can cost you.”

Sivits’ father, Daniel, said Friday he hadn’t seen the reports and wasn’t interested in what they said. He said he had been told not to comment, though he wouldn’t say who told him that. He also wouldn’t say if the family had an attorney.