US soldier faces nine years in Abu Ghraib sentence

Guards at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison took orders from military intelligence officers, the ringleader of the abuse scandal testified yesterday at the sentencing hearing of Lynndie England.

Ms England, 22, was convicted on Monday of abuse such as holding a leash to a naked Iraqi prisoner's neck when she was a US Army private working as a guard at the prison. Her former lover Charles Graner, who is serving a 10-year sentence for abuses at the prison outside Baghdad, testified as a witness for Ms England, who faces up to nine years in prison. "Sir, I nearly beat a military intelligence detainee to death with military intelligence there," Mr Graner, 37, told the court. "We treated each military detainee specifically on how the handler wanted."

Defence lawyers have sought to show that Ms England was overly compliant to authority and Mr Graner in particular. About Ms England, Mr Graner said: "She's young, she's suggestible."