Soldier pleads guilty, details prison abuse

In another instance, he said, Spec Charles Graner put a sandbag over a detainee’s head and ‘‘punched the detainee with a closed fist so hard in the temple that the detainee was knocked unconscious.’’ Graner will be the fourth US soldier to be court-martialled over the abuse of prisoners.

Transcripts of two statements Sivits made in January were provided by Harvey Volzer, a lawyer representing Spec Megan Ambuhl, another soldier charged in the case. Sivits’s father has said the family cannot afford a civilian lawyer, and the identity of Sivits’ military attorney could not be learned on Thursday night.

Sivits, 24, of Hyndman, Pa., admitted that he photographed the abuse but never reported it. His offer to plead guilty has been accepted by the staff judge advocate overseeing his court-martial, according to a memo reviewed by The Washington Post, and lawyers representing some of the other charged soldiers. It could not be determined which charge he has pleaded guilty to.

Sivits has been ordered to face a special court-martial, a proceeding similar to a misdemeanor trial in which defendants face a maximum prison sentence of one year. That, combined with the plea, indicates that he has agreed to testify against other soldiers in the case, Volzer and legal experts said.

In his statement, Sivits implicated five of six other soldiers charged in the case. Lawyers representing the soldiers or their families have denied anything illegal was done. Most of Sivits’s statement concerns the night of last October 3.

Frederick had asked him to come to holding cells in Abu Ghraib where some new detainees had arrived. Sivits said that after he and Frederick got there, some detainees were put in a pile on the floor. Sivits said Davis ran into the room and ‘‘lunged into the air and landed in the middle of where the detainees were.’’

Sivits said Frederick later hit a detainee in the chest ‘‘for no reason.’’ ‘‘The detainee took a deep breath and kind of squatted down,’’ Sivits said. ‘‘The detainee said he could not (breathe). They called for a medic to come down to try to get the detainee to (breathe) right.’’

At another point, Sivits said, a detainee with gunshot wounds to his leg was handcuffed to a bed. Graner then apparently picked up an object and struck the man’s wounds ‘‘with a half baseball swing,’’ Sivits said. He said he saw two other soldiers, Specs Lynndie England and Sabrina Harman, posing for photos with naked detainees. Sivits told investigators that the abuse would not have happened had higher-ranking members been present. ‘‘Our command would have slammed us,’’ he said. ‘‘They believe in doing the right thing. If they saw what was going on, there would be hell to pay.’’

That statement echoes testimony given by one of the initial investigators on the case. During Ambuhl’s Article 32 hearing, Tyler Pieron, an Army criminal investigator, said the abuses occurred ‘‘after the chain of command had changed shifts and gone home.’’ Both Sivits and Pieron said that a sergeant first class at one point witnessed an incident and ordered the soldiers to stop. Sivits said he did not report the abuse to his commanders because Graner told him not to.

— LAT-WP