BAGHDAD, Iraq – The request made to Spc. Jeremy Sivits was simple, and the soldier had a simple response. Describe, his lawyer told him during his court-martial Wednesday, what it was like to work at the Abu Ghraib prison.
Sivits, dressed in desert-brown fatigues and sitting on the witness stand, stared straight ahead and stated firmly, “Just like hell.” The 24-year-old paused for a moment, as if the military judge might disbelieve him, and added, “Honestly, it was.”
It was the start of Sivits’ attempt to explain his actions as one of the six Army reservists accused of abusing hooded, naked Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, actions that have roiled the American military.
“I would like to apologize to the Iraqi people and to the detainees,” said Sivits, the first person to be court-martialed for the abuses documented by graphic photographs. “I want to apologize to the Army, to my unit, to the country. I want to apologize to my family. I should have protected those detainees.”
The judge, Col. James Pohl, accepted Sivits’ guilty plea to two counts of dereliction of duty, one count each of conspiracy to maltreat detainees and of maltreatment, but rejected his plea for leniency. Pohl sentenced him to the maximum penalty allowed in the proceeding known as a special court-martial: a year imprisonment, a reduction of rank and a bad conduct discharge from the Army.
As part of a plea bargain, which spared him the more severe penalties of a general court-martial, Sivits agreed to testify against other soldiers at future courts-martial. He was the first member of the 372nd Military Police Company to be court-martialed in the case.
“I have learned a huge lesson, sir,” he said. Choking back tears, he called Abu Ghraib the worst assignment of his career.
“We were attacked by mortars, rockets and small arms fire,” said Sivits, a mechanic who said he was never supposed to be in contact with detainees. “It was dirty. The prison was overcrowded. It was like a horror movie. Just like hell.”
Sivits admitted to standing by while other soldiers abused detainees for more than half an hour, acts that included punching a prisoner so hard that soldiers feared he had suffered cardiac arrest and stomping on prisoners’ hands with steel-toed Army boots.
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