BAGHDAD
U.S. Army Spc. Jeremy Sivits pleaded guilty last week to complicity in the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison, apologizing for taking some of the photos that led to the broadening scandal.

Sivits, who received the maximum penalty of one year in prison and a bad conduct discharge, wept and apologized for his mistakes. “I should have protected those detainees, not taken the photos,” he said.

Sivits’ court martial last week marked only the first prosecution of alleged abusers. Among the other developments last week:

• According to court martial records obtained by the Los Angeles Times, all of the prosecution witnesses at a hearing against an alleged ringleader in the abuse refused to testify, invoking the military’s version of the 5th Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination. The three witnesses each refused to detail their actions at an April hearing into the role played by Cpl. Charles Graner, who was in charge of some interrogations at Abu Ghraib. The men’s silence suggests that witnesses may decide to close ranks to protect themselves and one another, reported the Times.
• The Reuters news agency reported that three of its Iraqi employees were abused by U.S. soldiers in January while investigating the downing of a U.S. helicopter near Falluja. The men, as well as an Iraqi working for NBC, were allegedly subjected to physical and sexual abuses akin to those at Abu Ghraib, according to their official accounts. A summary investigation by the U.S. military, which did not interview the alleged victims, concluded that “no specific incidents of abuse were found” and said no soldiers “admit or report knowledge of physical abuse or torture.” Reuters has demanded a review of that investigation, saying it is riddled with “inaccuracies and inconsistencies” that suggest a shoddy or biased process. Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of ground forces in Iraq, told Reuters the investigation had been “thorough and objective” and its findings were sound, according to the news agency.
• The New York Times reported last week that military lawyers, who long have served as watchdogs against abusive interrogations, were barred from auditing interrogations during the recent war on Iraq. In the first Gulf War, military lawyers observed questionings from behind two-way mirrors with “a right to intercede if interrogators crossed the line,” explained Scott Horton, a former chairman of the Committee on International Human Rights of the City Bar Association in New York. Abandoning that practice left the situation ripe for the abuses now being revealed and created “an aura of lawlessness” that can infect conduct, one of the committee’s investigators added.
• A soldier from the Florida National Guard was found guilty of desertion after refusing to return to Iraq allegedly due to distress over abuse of Iraqis. Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia, a nine-year veteran of the reserve force, went AWOL last October while on leave. Turning himself in two months ago, Mejia said he could no longer fight an “oil-driven war” and was seeking conscientious objector status after seeing Iraqi civilians hit by gunfire and watching an Iraqi boy die while military doctors argued over who should treat him. Those objections, he said, were amplified as the images of acute abuse of Iraqi prisoners hit the headlines. Mejia, who was found guilty of desertion, was sentenced to a year in prison.
• The U.S. State Department last week released a delayed report into human-rights violations by other countries. The release of the report, originally scheduled for May 5, was bumped back as headlines of U.S.-led abuse took over the world’s front pages. Insisting that its findings are valid, Assistant Secretary of State Lorne Craner admitted that the current prison-abuse scandal raises reasonable questions about whether “Abu Ghraib robs us of our ability to talk about human rights abroad.” Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, told the Los Angeles Times that the situation was “a perfect example of how it’s not enough to have moral clarity if you don’t have moral authority.”