Abu Ghraib guard England was ready to go to prison

KILLEEN, Texas - Former Abu Ghraib prison guard Lynndie England was ready to go to prison this week and was extremely disappointed by the collapse of a plea deal that could have put her behind bars for several years, her military lawyer said.

"You still have a sword of Damocles hanging over her head at this point, which makes it extremely difficult to continue to live with," Captain Jonathan Crisp told Reuters.

"Now we are back to where we were a year ago, which anyone I think would recognise, is horribly wearing physically, emotionally and so on."

"Especially when you have braced yourself for some form of confinement, whether it would have been a week, a year or whatever."

The military judge in the case, Colonel James Pohl, declared a mistrial yesterday after the abuse ringleader and England's former lover, Charles Graner, testified he was acting as the ranking soldier when he asked England to hold a leash linked to the neck of a mentally disabled naked prisoner.

England had pleaded guilty to conspiring with Graner to abuse the prisoner, so his testimony contradicted her plea, requiring a new trial. The plea deal would have limited her sentence to just a few years, far below the 38-year maximum once threatened in the case, Crisp said.

"Certainly it took a turn that we did not anticipate," Crisp said. "When the judge took over, it was destroyed when he asked if this was a legitimate cell extraction technique."

Pictures of England smiling as she stood with naked and humiliated Iraqis, including the one in which she held the detainee on a leash, were the most prominent images of the abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad dating from 2003.

Publication of the photographs in early 2004 hurt the credibility of the US military at a time when the United States was being criticised around the world for the Iraq invasion.

On Thursday, army Reserve Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski became the first high-level officer demoted in connection with the scandal, the army said.

England's civilian attorney, Rick Hernandez, trying his first military case, had been questioning Graner when the plea deal began to unravel. Crisp said Hernandez would not be part of the defence in the future because he had been providing his services without charge and could no longer afford to do so.

Some military law experts criticised Hernandez for losing control of a witness in the penalty phase of the trial.

"Having been a judge for several years ... I'd slap the hell out of the defence," said Gary Solis, who teaches the law of war at the US Military Academy at West Point.

There appeared to be tensions between England's two lawyers during the court-martial. Crisp was visibly irritated with his colleague on several occasions. Hernandez did not return a call to his cell phone for comment.

The mistrial means the military will began a fresh investigation next week, with a trial unlikely before July, Crisp said. Another plea was still possible, he said, although the government appeared ill-disposed to another deal at this point.

England will likely return to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where she is a low-level clerk and mother of a 7-month-old boy she had with Graner.

Crisp called her a pawn in the larger prisoner abuse scandal but said she was still willing to be accountable.

"She was ready to accept responsibility; she was ready to move on to the next stage in her life," he said.

- REUTERS