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http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Con...l=968705899037

MP strikes plea deal in Iraq case
Guards' superiors didn't know about abuse, he says

• WASHINGTON (CP) - The first American soldier to face trial in the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal says his colleagues joked around as they beat and sexually humiliated their captives but claimed that his superiors were unaware of what they were doing.
  
  "If they saw what was going on, there would have been hell to pay," Specialist Jeremy Sivits says in two legal statements released to some U.S. newspapers.
  
  Sivits, who faces a court-martial next Wednesday in Baghdad, implicated some of his colleagues, saying they stripped prisoners and forced them to masturbate. One jumped on a pile of detainees, "then stomped on either the fingers or toes" as they screamed, he said.
  
  A prisoner with bullet wounds in his leg was handcuffed to a bed while a soldier hit him with a police baton, said Sivits, who reportedly reach a deal with prosecutors and is expected to plead guilty.
  
  Another detainee was so punched hard in the temple that he blacked out.
  
  "I was laughing at some of the stuff that they had them do," Sivits says in a January statement.
  
  "I was disgusted at some of the stuff as well."
  
  Sivits pegged Cpl. Charles Graner as a ringleader of the abuse and torture at Abu Ghraib prison and was "acting like he was enjoying it."
  
  Graner has been charged on several counts, including committing indecent acts, adultery and other counts.
  
  Other U.S. military police facing charges say higher-ups or intelligence officers encouraged them to "soften up" prisoners for interrogation.
  
  "I could have said no to anything, but I would have been disobeying an order," said Sgt. Javal Davis, one of the accused.
  
  "So you can either get in trouble for not doing what you're told or get in trouble for doing what you're told," Davis told ABC today. "It's kind of like a Catch-22."