Hearing postponed for US soldier in Iraq leash photo

3.15pm UDPATE

FORT BRAGG, North Carolina - A military hearing for a US soldier photographed holding a naked Iraqi prisoner on a leash in an abuse scandal that shook the Bush administration was postponed on Monday.

The hearing, to determine whether Lynndie England should stand trial, had been due to start at Fort Bragg in North Carolina on Tuesday but was put off until next month, a spokesman at the military base said.

"We were notified that it was postponed late this afternoon, all the parties agreed to postpone to the week of July 12," said the spokesman, Major Richard Patterson. He gave no reason for the delay.

One of England's lawyers, Rose Mary Zapor, confirmed the delay and said it may have been caused by her resignation.

"Part of the reason is that I had to resign today from the (defence) team," she told Reuters from her Colorado home. "My husband has severe health issues."

England has said she was obeying superiors when she was photographed in gleeful poses with humiliated prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.

In one of the pictures, taken in late 2003, she pointed at the genitals of a hooded, naked man, a cigarette dangling from her lips.

The photographs, which emerged in April, prompted worldwide protest against the US treatment of Iraqi prisoners and hurt US efforts to stabilise Iraq and "win the peace".

US President George W Bush and other top US officials apologised for the behaviour but put the blame on a small group of soldiers. The alleged abuse took place as US forces pressed for information to halt a bloody Iraqi insurgency.

England, of Fort Ashby, West Virginia, is accused of conspiring to maltreat Iraqi prisoners, assaulting prisoners on at least three occasions, committing acts prejudicial to good order and committing an indecent act.

The legal proceeding known as an Article 32 investigation is to decide whether England should face trial. A hearing officer will make the determination.

England's lawyers will have the right to call witnesses, question prosecution witnesses and to have England testify.

England's lawyers have called their client a "poster child" for the Bush administration's flawed Iraq war policies.

They have included Vice President Dick Cheney and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on a list of 130 people they would like to call as witnesses. But they have said they have no power to compel testimony at an Article 32 hearing.

England, a member of the 372nd Military Police Company, was charged along with six other US military police reservists with abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

Pre-trial hearings were held in Baghdad on Monday for two others -- Spc Charles Graner and Sergeant Javal Davis. A scheduled hearing for Staff Sergeant Ivan Frederick was postponed after his defence counsel failed to turn up.

One US soldier has already been sentenced to a year in prison after admitting abuse charges.

England was sent home from Iraq after becoming pregnant. US media report she is carrying Graner's child.

In media interviews, England has said she was instructed to pose for the pictures by her superiors and was just doing her job. "I was thinking it was kind of weird," she said in one interview of posing for a photo next to a naked prisoner.

Lawyers for some of the accused MPs have said intelligence officers ordered them to "soften up" prisoners for interrogation. The Pentagon has denied accusations it sanctioned rough treatment to make people talk.

Photographs taken at Abu Ghraib showed US soldiers piling naked Iraqis into a pyramid and threatening them with dogs. In one, a hooded prisoner has electrical wires attached to his body.

- REUTERS


Herald Feature: Iraq