Abuse Ringleader Gets 10
years
Boston.com
By Omar Sinan
Associated Press
January 17, 2005
BAGHDAD -- News that a US Army reservist had been sentenced to
10 years behind bars for physically and sexually abusing Iraqi
detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison drew scorn yesterday from
Iraqis who thought he should have been tried in Baghdad and
punished with death.
Iraq's interim government issued no official reaction, but
several Iraqi residents interviewed in Baghdad said the trial and
its outcome brought no justice. They said it bore a humiliation
as potent as the shame when pictures of the abuse emerged in
April.
Abdul-Razak Abdul-Fattah, 65, a retired Iraqi Army officer,
said he was shocked to see TV footage of Army Specialist Charles
A. Graner Jr. leaving court smiling and laughing although his
legs and hands were shackled.
"It showed on his face that he did not regret the shameful
acts that he and his colleagues committed," he said. "Perhaps
Americans think that those things, I mean showing people naked,
is normal and not shameful."
Images of reservists abusing Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib
provoked widespread outrage throughout the Arab world in
particular, where communities can shun people who have suffered
such deeply personal and public disgrace.
Graner, 36, thought to be the ringleader of the abuse, was
accused of stacking naked prisoners in a human pyramid and later
ordering them to masturbate as other soldiers took photographs.
He also allegedly punched a man in the head hard enough to knock
him out and struck an injured prisoner with a metal stick.
Graner was sentenced Saturday to 10 years in military prison
in the first court-martial in the scandal. He could have received
15.
Asked whether he felt remorse after the sentence was handed
down, Graner said: "There's a war on. Bad things happen."
Graner will be dishonorably discharged when his sentence is
completed.
Hussein Mohammed, 22, a student, said the humiliation of the
prisoners lingers, nine months after the scandal erupted.
"Even though the Iraqi community knows that those abused
people were forced to do so, the community will continue to look
down on them," Mohammed said.
A shopkeeper in downtown Baghdad said Graner and his cohorts
should be executed in Iraq in front of those they abused.
"That person brought ignominy to those Iraqis," Mohammed
Ahmed, 24, said. "As Arabs, we prefer to die with honor rather
than live with such disgrace."
A teacher in the northern city of Kirkuk said that the abuse
at the prison recalled the crimes committed by Saddam Hussein's
regime.
"When Saddam created the mass graves, we thought that it was a
savage thing," Sardar Mohammed, 38, said. "But when we saw the
Americans and what they have done at Abu Ghraib, I was astonished
because America came here carrying slogans of freedom and
democracy."
© Copyright 2005 Globe Newspaper Company.
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