England pleads guilty to inmate abuse
FORT HOOD, Texas – Pfc. Lynndie England, the young woman pictured grinning, giving a thumbs-up and holding a naked Iraqi by a leash in some of the most notorious photos to come out of the Abu Ghraib scandal, pleaded guilty Monday to mistreating Iraqi prisoners.
The 22-year-old Army reservist told the judge she initially had resisted taking part in the abuse at the Baghdad prison but ultimately caved in to pressure from comrades.
“I had a choice, but I chose to do what my friends wanted me to,” she said, entering her pleas a day before the start of her trial.
The charges carry up to 11 years in prison, but prosecutors and the defense reached an agreement for a lesser sentence. A military jury is set to convene today to determine her punishment; she will get the lesser of the jury’s sentence or the term agreed to in the plea bargain. If she had been convicted as charged, she could have gotten 16 1/2 years behind bars.
The judge asked her about a photo of her smiling and pointing at a naked detainee’s genitals while she was smoking a cigarette.
England said she replied, “No, no way,” at first when a fellow soldier asked her to pose for the picture.
“But they were being very persistent, bugging me, so I said, ‘OK, whatever,’ ” she told the judge.
The plea bargain settles one of the most prominent cases to come out of the Abu Ghraib scandal.
England became a central figure after photos emerged last year showing her and others sexually humiliating Iraqi prisoners.
England’s lawyers have argued that she and others in her military police unit were acting on orders from military intelligence to “soften up” prisoners for interrogation. But Army investigators testified during hearings last summer that England said the reservists had taken the photos while “they were joking around, having some fun.”
She told the judge that Pvt. Charles Graner Jr., the reputed ringleader of the abuse and the man said to be the father of England’s infant son, had put the leash around the prisoner’s neck in order to take him from one cell to another.
When the prisoner resisted, she told the judge, Graner said to her: “Hold this – I’m going to take a picture.”
The judge, Col. James Pohl, asked if she thought the leash was a legitimate way to control the detainee.
“I assumed it was OK” because he was a military policeman, England said of Graner. “He had a background as a corrections officer.”
Graner was convicted in January on a range of abuse charges and sentenced to 10 years in prison. Last month, he married former Spc. Megan Ambuhl, an Abu Ghraib defendant who was discharged from the Army without serving prison time. Graner had another man stand in for him in the marriage-by-proxy April 12 near Fort Hood.
England, from Fort Ashby, W.Va., is one of seven members of the Maryland-based 372nd Military Police Company charged with humiliating and assaulting prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Four other members of the 372nd and two low-level military intelligence officers have entered guilty pleas, getting sentences ranging from no time to 8 1/2 years. The only soldier to stand trial so far is Graner. Spc. Sabrina Harman, a former Abu Ghraib guard, is scheduled to go on trial at Fort Hood next week..