A military jury convicted the second soldier to be tried in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, returning guilty verdicts on all but one of the seven charges she faced for her role in the abuse of Iraqi inmates.
A panel of four Army officers and four senior enlisted soldiers convicted Specialist Sabrina Harman Monday on one count of conspiracy to maltreat detainees, four counts of maltreating detainees and one count of dereliction of duty.
The 27-year-old reservist from Lorton, Virginia, was acquitted on one maltreatment count that accused her of photographing a group of Iraqi detainees who were forced to masturbate in public by Abu Ghraib guards. One of Harman's co-defendants testified last week that she was not present when that incident occurred.
The jury also found that Harman did not commit two of the nine acts that were part of the dereliction charge, but she was convicted of the overall offense.
Jurors deliberated for about 3 1/2 hours before returning their decision. Harman showed no reaction while the jury foreman read each of the verdicts. She left the building without speaking to reporters.
Her sentencing hearing was scheduled to begin Tuesday. Harman faces a maximum of 5 1/2 years in a military prison.
Harman, a former pizza shop manager from Virginia, was the second soldier to be tried for allegedly mistreating prisoners at Abu Ghraib. She was depicted in several of the most notorious photos taken at Abu Ghraib in late October and early November 2003, and she is accused of taking other pictures.
Harman posed for a photo with Private Charles Graner behind a group of naked detainees stacked in a pyramid. In another photo, she was shown with a prisoner on whose leg she is accused of writing "rapeist" (sic).
Earlier Monday, prosecutors said in closing arguments that Harman and other guards on the night shift at Abu Ghraib conspired to mistreat the prisoners.
"They were all acting together for their own amusement," said Captain Chris Graveline. "There was no justification for what they did that night."
Graveline said the group took pictures of what they were doing "so they could remember that night, so they could laugh again at these men ... There's nothing funny about what happened at Abu Ghraib."
Defense lawyer Frank Spinner said Harman was a novice soldier who had no prison guard experience and who received virtually no training before going to work at the chaotic and overcrowded prison as part of the Maryland-based 372nd Military Police Company.
"Shame on the Army for putting an ill-equipped, ill-trained junior specialist in a position where she had to challenge her [enlisted] leadership to do the right thing," he said after putting on a case that lasted only a few hours. "This is not one of the Army's finest moments."
The final witness was Kelly Bryant, Harman's roommate in Virginia, who read part of a letter Harman wrote home in late October 2003.
In the letter, Harman said she took pictures of detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib because she was opposed to the treatment and wanted to document the wrongdoing.
"At first I thought it was funny, but these people are going too far," Harman wrote. "Kelly, it's awful. I thought I could handle anything, but I was wrong."
Harman said in the letter that her initial amusement at how the detainees were mistreated gave way to the realization that her co-defendants were engaged in illegal activity.
"It hit me it was a form of molestation -- you can't do that," she wrote. "What if that was me in their shoes?"
Six co-defendants in the Abu Ghraib case have made plea bargains. Graner was convicted in January and is now serving a 10-year sentence in an Army prison.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion