FORT HOOD, Texas - A US Army reservist convicted of attaching wires to an Iraqi prisoner in a photographed scene that outraged the international community was sentenced on May 17 to six months in prison.
A military jury deciding the fate of Sabrina Harman, 27, at the nation's largest Army base recommended six months of confinement, one of the lightest punishments handed down in the Abu Ghraib cases.
She had faced a maximum of five and a half years and the prosecution had sought a three-year sentence.
Harman will also receive a bad conduct discharge.
"I think she was extremely relieved," said her civilian attorney Frank Spinner. "To have a jury come back and say six months, that's pretty significant."
The jury found Harman guilty on May 16 on six of seven abuse-related charges, including a photographed incident in which she placed wires on a hooded Iraqi prisoner and said he would be electrocuted if he stepped off the box he stood on.
"I wish to apologize to any and all detainees," Harman told a military courtroom earlier. "I failed my duties. I failed my mission. Not only did I let down the people in Iraq, I let down every single soldier that serves today."
"I take full responsibility for my actions," she said. "The decisions I made were mine and mine alone."
One of three women implicated in the Abu Ghraib scandal, Harman appeared in a notorious photo showing a naked pyramid of Iraqis accused of rioting in a prison yard. She wrote "rapeist" on one prisoner's leg before he was forced to pile into the pyramid.
The photographs, made public just over a year ago, badly damaged America's reputation abroad.
Earlier, her partner told the military panel that Harman is a gentle woman. "What you see out there is not the true Sabrina Harman," Kelly Bryant, said in testimony that brought Harman to tears. "She's the type of person who wouldn't allow you to step on an ant or kill a spider."
Bryant said Harman, who worked at a pizza parlor before the war, had wanted to adopt an Iraqi boy. "She's generous, gentle, caring, unselfish," she said.
Harman is only the second Abu Ghraib guard convicted by a military panel, following the January court-martial of ringleader Charles Graner, who was sentenced to 10 years.
Attorney Spinner has said the government offered a plea deal last year for Harman with a two-year sentence. More recently, a prosecution source said, she was offered a one-year plea deal that she also turned down.
Harman's gamble to go to trial paid off and she was also credited with 51 days already served, plus 20 days for good behaviour.
Six other soldiers have reached plea deals, with all except Graner's new wife, Megan Ambuhl, receiving prison time.
After Harman's trial the only remaining related case is that of Lynndie England, Graner's former lover who bore his child last year. England is shown in photographs holding a leash around a naked prisoner's neck and jeering at the genitals of another naked detainee.
England's lawyer said a pretrial hearing in the case was scheduled to take place over several days next week, with Graner and other jailed abusers expected to testify.
(Agencies via Xinhua)
