Sivits receives harshest penalty in first court-martial for Iraqi prisoner scandal

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Spc. Jeremy C. Sivits received the maxium penalty Wednesday — one year in prison, reduction in rank and a bad conduct discharge — in the first court-martial stemming from mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison.

Sivits, who pleaded guilty to four abuse charges, broke down in tears as he apologized for taking pictures of naked Iraqi prisoners being humiliated.

"I'd like to apologize to the Iraqi people and those detainees," he said in his statement. "I should have protected those detainees, not taken the photos."

During the hearing, Sivits, 24, told the court he saw one U.S. soldier punch one Iraqi in the head and other guards stomp on the hands and feet of detainees. He also recounted that prisoners were stripped and forced to form a human pyramid.

His laywer had appealed to the court for leniency, saying Sivits could be rehabilitated and had contributed to society in the past. Sivits himself pleaded with the judge, Col. James Pohl, to allow him to remain in the army, which he said had been his lifes' goal.

"I have learned huge lessons, sir," he said. "You can't let people abuse people like they have done."

Sivits, a member of the 372nd Military Police Company, a Reserve unit based in Cresaptown, Md., was found guilty of two counts of mistreating detainees, dereliction of duty for failing to protect them from abuse, cruelty, and forcing a prisoner "to be positioned in a pile on the floor to be assaulted by other soldiers," a military briefer said after the proceedings.

Military officials said Sivits would be transferred to a military regional confinement facility to serve his sentence but did not specify which facility.

He had been expected to get a relatively light sentence and then testify against others. But prosecutors asked the judge to impose the harshest sentence despite Sivits' willingness to provide details about the crimes of other defendants, saying that Sivits knew that abuse was banned by the Geneva Conventions.

Earlier Wednesday, three others from Sivits company accused in the abuse — Sgt. Javal Davis, Staff Sgt. Ivan L. Frederick Frederick and Spc. Charles Graner Jr. — appeared for arraignment in the courtroom at the Baghdad Convention Center, located in the heavily guarded Green Zone.

The three waived their rights to have charges read in court, and their pleas were deferred pending another hearing June 21 after the defense complained it had been denied access to two victims of abuse who were government witnesses. The judge asked prosecutors for an explanation.