Sun, May 09, 2004 - Page 7 News List

`Good girl' soldier at the heart of Abu Ghraib storm

MYSTERY How did a girl who wanted to study meteorology, with no known predilection for violence, become an international symbol of US military sadism?

THE GUARDIAN , WASHINGTON

But within the military she was known as an obedient soldier. In Baghdad, she told her family she was assigned to register prisoners at Abu Ghraib -- essentially a clerk. "She shouldn't have been processing prisoners in the first place," her father, Kenneth, told the Baltimore Sun. "She was trained as an administrator, a paper- pusher."

He admitted that at night she would regularly walk across the prison yard to see Graner and other friends, who were involved in interrogations.

But the family had no inkling of what went on during those night visits until January when England telephoned from Baghdad and told them to expect trouble. And they still refuse to believe the images of their daughter that have travelled around the world.

"She has more values than that," Terrie England told CBS News. "She's a good girl."

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