Another Abu Ghraib Guard Is Found Guilty

A military jury Monday convicted Spc. Sabrina Harman on all but one of the seven charges she faced for her role in abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

A panel of four Army officers and four senior enlisted soldiers convicted Harman 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, Va., was acquitted on one maltreatment count.

Her sentencing hearing was scheduled to begin today. Harman faces a maximum of 5 1/2 years in a military prison.

Harman, a former pizza shop manager, was the second soldier to be tried for allegedly mistreating Abu Ghraib prisoners. She was seen in several notorious photos taken at the prison near Baghdad in late October and early November 2003, and she is accused of taking other pictures.

In one shocking image, Harman and then-Cpl. Charles A. Graner Jr. posed with naked detainees stacked in a pyramid. In another photo, she was grinning next to a dead prisoner. And she was also seen with a detainee on whose leg she had written “rapeist.”

On 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 Capt. 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 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 leadership to do the right thing,” he said after putting on a case that lasted a few hours. “This is not one of the Army’s finest moments.”

Six codefendants in the Abu Ghraib case have made plea bargains. Graner was convicted in January and is serving a 10-year sentence in an Army prison.

Pfc. Lynndie R. England also reached a plea deal, but the judge threw it out after Graner’s testimony contradicted England’s assertion that she knew her actions were wrong.