Fort Meade, Maryland - The court-martial of the only US
officer charged over the abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib
prison delivered no immediate verdict Monday as jurors deliberated
for more than four hours without reaching a decision.
A panel of 10 higher-ranking officers is weighing charges of
mistreatment and cruelty, disobeying orders and dereliction of duty
against US Army Lieutenant Colonel Steven Jordan, 51, who headed the
Abu Ghraib interrogation centre in the fall of 2003.
Jury deliberations were set to continue Tuesday.
Jordan could face up to eight-and-a-half years in prison, a fine
and dismissal from the Army. He denies wrongdoing and claims the Army
made him a scapegoat for the scandal.
During Monday's closing arguments, prosecutors alleged that his
lack of leadership encouraged the notorious rampages by US soldiers
at the prison outside Baghdad. He neglected to stop alleged abuses
during a roundup of Iraqi prison guards and failed to train and
supervise soldiers, prosecutors alleged.
'He created the atmosphere that led to the abuse of Iraqi military
intelligence detainees and Iraqi correctional officers,' prosecutor
Lieutenant Colonel John Tracy told the court.
Jordan headed the interrogation site at the prison outside
Baghdad during the time when US military police soldiers on night
duty took infamous pictures of naked detainees being mistreated,
sexually humiliated and threatened with dogs.
He is not charged specifically for those abuses, but over a
November 2003 incident when US troops stripped and lined up Iraqi
guards for a search after a detainee smuggled weapons into his cell.
Dogs allegedly were used to control the Iraqis.
Prosecutors argue that the actions happened without the required
authorization from the top US commander in Iraq and Jordan, as the
senior officer at the scene, should have stopped them.
Jordan's lawyers made a final plea for his innocence before the
case went to the jury at a military base north of Washington.
'It is tempting to say some officer must be held accountable -
but not this officer,' defence lawyer Major Kris Poppe told the panel
of seven male and three female soldiers in his closing statement
Monday.
The defence portrayed Jordan as a soldier's advocate intent on
improving living conditions for his troops and on protecting the
sprawling prison against mortar and sniper fire from insurgents.
His aim was to ensure that Abu Ghraib's military intelligence
soldiers and military police could do their work, not to personally
supervise interrogations, Poppe said.
In addition, the defence argued that Jordan effectively had no
command authority over the military intelligence and military police
who carried out the actual interrogations at Abu Ghraib
But the potentially most severe charge is disobeying orders. In
2004, Jordan allegedly ignored a general's order not to communicate
with other soldiers about an internal investigation into the Abu
Ghraib abuses.
Evidence presented in court indicated that he e-mailed several
soldiers he knew from Abu Ghraib, asking whether they believed he was
connected to any abuses.
Eleven lower-ranking US soldiers were convicted of abuses at Abu
Ghraib, but Jordan is the first - and likely the last - officer to be
charged.
The scandal erupted when the photos became public in 2004,
inflaming anti-Americanism in the Middle East, causing worldwide
outrage and damaging US credibility.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
USA
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