Prison guard faces seven charges

Friday, May 14, 2004 | 11:03 a.m.

SUN WIRE REPORTS

BAGHDAD -- The U.S. Army has filed criminal charges including adultery against Military Police Cpl. Charles A. Graner in connection with the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, a senior U.S. officer announced today.

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said the seven charges against Graner included conspiracy to maltreat detainees, dereliction of duty for woefully failing to protect detainees from abuse, maltreatment of detainees, assaulting detainees, committing indecent acts, adultery and obstruction of justice.

He will be arraigned May 20 but no trial date has been set, Kimmitt added.

Spc. Jeremy C. Sivits, of Hyndman, Pa., goes on trial Wednesday before a special court-martial in the first trial of defendants in the abuse scandal.

On Thursday the military set a May 20 arraignment date for Staff Sgt. Ivan Frederick II and Sgt. Javal S. Davis. Charges against the soldiers were announced Wednesday.

At the arraignment, the men must enter pleas. The military said the date and venue for their trials have not been set.

Graner, 35, is emerging as a central figure in the abuse scandal swirling around Abu Ghraib. To his fellow soldiers in the 372nd Military Police Company, he was a voice of strength and experience, having served as a Marine during Desert Storm and worked as a correction officer at one of the toughest, most secure prisons in Pennsylvania.

But to Iraqi detainees, he was among the most feared and loathed of the American guards, accused of routinely beating, intimidating and humiliating them, military investigators have said. A photograph showing him flashing a muscular thumbs-up beside a pyramid of hooded, naked Iraqis has become one of the iconic images of the abuse.

His lawyer, Guy Womack, said Graner was only following orders in Iraq. His friends say the allegations are out of character, adding that he is a funny, articulate, hardworking man and devoted father whose life was unremarkable before his emotionally wrenching divorce.

"Would I trust him to baby-sit my child?" asked Diane DeMarco, a Pennsylvania correction officer and union official who has known Graner since 1996. "Yes."

But documents portray a more ominous, hot-tempered side to the man.

In late 2001, Graner's life was on a steady downward spiral. His former wife and two children had left after a bitter divorce. He had pleaded guilty to stalking and beating his ex-wife. He had been fired from his job as a state prison guard and was having trouble paying the smallest of bills.

His former wife, who has remarried, accused him of threatening her with a gun, banging her head against the floor and sneaking into her house to secretly videotape her.

Graner also worked at one of Pennsylvania's most notorious maximum security prisons, State Correctional Institution Greene, where dozens of correction officers were accused of harassing, humiliating and beating inmates in the 1990s. Though Graner was not involved in that scandal, he was accused in 1999 of beating a handcuffed inmate. That suit was later dismissed.

Which image is the truer one will be much debated in the coming months. But some officials are already questioning how Graner, given his record, could have assumed a supervisory role at a tinderbox like Abu Ghraib.

"This guy is in one of the most notorious prisons in the world?" Rep. John P. Murtha, a Democrat and former Marine from Pennsylvania, said last week. "Outrageous. The damage that they did was irreparable."