Lynndie England

Lynndie Rana England (born November 8, 1982) is a U.S. army reservist, one of several soldiers charged by the U.S. Army in connection with the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse in a Baghdad prison during the Occupation of Iraq.

England held the rank of Private First Class in the 372nd Military Police company during her tour of duty in Iraq. Along with other soldiers, she is accused of inflicting sexual, physical, and psychological abuse on Iraqi prisoners of war and of allowing others to do the same.

England faced a general court-martial in January 2005 on charges of conspiracy to maltreat prisoners and assault consummated by battery. On April 30, 2005, England agreed to plead guilty to abuse charges. Her plea bargain reduced her maximum sentence from 16 years to 11 years if accepted by the federal judge. She will plead guilty to four counts of maltreating prisoners, two counts of conspiracy, and one count of dereliction of duty. In exchange, prosecutors have dropped two other charges, committing indecent acts and failure to obey a lawful order.

On May 4, 2005 Col. James Pohl tossed out her plea bargain as new testimony by now Pvt. Graner suggested that Pfc. England did not know her actions were wrong at the time. This contradicts Pfc. England's statements of May 2, 2005, when she entered her guilty plea. It is likely than an Article 32 hearing (the military equivalent of a grand-jury proceeding) will be held in the near future.

Biography

Born in Ashland, Kentucky, United States, England moved with her family to Fort Ashby, West Virginia, when she was two years old. She grew up in a trailer park as the daughter of a railroad worker, Kenneth England, who worked at the station in nearby Cumberland, Maryland, and Terrie England. At school, Lynndie England, just 5.15 ft (157 cm) tall, was known for wearing combat boots and camouflage fatigues. She joined the Army Reserve in Cumberland in 2001 while she was a junior at Frankfort High School in Ridgeley, to escape from a night job in a chicken-processing factory and to earn money so she could go to college to become a storm chaser. She was also a member of the Future Farmers of America. After graduating high school in 2001, she worked as a cashier in a IGA and married a co-worker, James L. Fike, in 2002, but they later divorced. She was sent to Iraq in 2003.

England was engaged to fellow reservist Charles Graner. She gave birth to a son, Carter Allan England, at 21:25 on October 11, 2004, at Womack Army Medical Center on Fort Bragg.

News accounts of the birth referred to Graner as England's "ex boyfriend".

Charges

England has been charged with abusing Iraqi prisoners of war at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. She appears in several photographs taken in 2003 at the prison, smiling and pointing at the genitalia of naked and hooded young male prisoners. In some of these photographs she appears alongside Charles Graner, giving the thumbs up in a sexually humiliating shot.

England was initially charged under the Uniform Code of Military Justice with 19 separate charges. These were later dropped to nine charges in February 2004. She decided to plead guilty to seven of these on April 30, 2005:

• Two counts of conspiracy (with Specialist Charles Graner) to commit maltreatment of an Iraqi detainee by posing in a photograph holding a leash around the neck of the detainee;
• Four counts of maltreating Iraqi detainees; and
• One count of dereliction of duty.

The other charges have been dropped. These charges included:

• One count of an indecent act by forcing Iraqi detainees to simulate masturbation;
• One count of failing to obey a lawful order;
• Several counts of committing acts "that were prejudicial to good order and discipline and were of nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces through her mistreatment of Iraqi detainees".

If the judge accepts her plea bargain, England faces a maximum sentence of up to eleven years in prison and a dishonorable discharge.

England and the other soldiers implicated in the abuse at Abu Ghraib may be held to have committed war crimes under the UN's Convention Against Torture and the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions, though it is unlikely they would be tried for these crimes by the UN.

Court-martial

Even before England was formally charged, she was transferred to the U.S. military installation at Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina on May 5, 2004, because of her pregnancy. Fort Bragg spokespeople say that England, who is not currently confined, is assigned to light duties with the Headquarters and Headquarters Company in the 16th Military Police Brigade at Fort Bragg, although she is attached to the 18th Airborne Corps' Dragon Brigade.

England's court-martial was scheduled to begin at 08:00 hrs on June 22 in Fort Bragg's Staff Judge Advocate building, the only Abu Ghraib case that the Army plans to hold in the United States, but the proceedings were delayed on June 21 on the agreement of both sides. Fort Bragg spokesperson Jackie Thomas informed the media that July 12 is the new date for the trial, which will begin with an Article 32 [1] hearing, taking place before Col. Denise Arn, the presiding officer. Like a grand jury, the court will hear testimony and arguments from both the military prosecutors and England's defense, and will then decide whether to recommend a full court-martial. The hearing will be open to the media.

England fired her first lawyer, Giorgio Ra'Shadd, after he was accused of improper handling of finances in an unrelated case. England is currently represented by Rose Mary Zapor and Roy Hardy, Colorado-based civilian lawyers, who say that during the trial they may call up to 100 witnesses, including the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney.

England is charged with two counts of conspiracy to maltreat detainees, one count of dereliction of duty, four counts of cruelty and maltreatment and two counts of committing indecent acts at the Abu Ghraib prison in 2003.

She originally faced 19 criminal counts that could have brought up to 38 years behind bars, but military prosecutors reduced the charges in February, 2005. No explanation was given for the reduction.

At her trial in May, 2005, military judge Colonel James Pohl declared a mistrial on the grounds that he could not accept her plea of guilty under a plea-bargain to a charge of conspiring with Spc. Charles Graner Jr. to maltreat detainees after Graner testified that he believed that, in placing a tether around the naked detainee's neck and asking England to pose for a photograph with him, he was documenting a legitimate use of force.

England faces a re-trial and, if convicted, punishments ranging anywhere from a reprimand to a punitive discharge and 11 years in jail.

Graner, the alleged ringleader of the abuse, was convicted on all charges earlier this year and sentenced to 10 years in prison. Graner and England were once lovers, and authorities believe he is the father of England's newborn child.

Four guards and two low-level military intelligence officers have made plea deals in the case. Their sentences ranged from no time to 8 1/2 years.

Perspectives

Colleen Kesner, a resident from England's hometown, said: "A lot of people here think they ought to just blow up the whole of Iraq. To the country boys here, if you're a different nationality, a different race, you're sub-human. That's the way that girls like Lynndie are raised... Tormenting Iraqis, in her mind, would be no different from shooting a turkey. Every season here you're hunting something. Over there, they're hunting Iraqis."

Defending England, her mother Terrie England said: "They were just doing stupid kid things, pranks. And what the Iraqis do to our men and women are just? The rules of the Geneva Convention, do they apply to everybody or just us?"

She added that, according to her daughter, "nothing happened which wasn't ordered by higher up. They are trying to pin all of this on the lower ranks. My daughter was just following orders. I think there's a conspiracy." Under the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal, however, "defense of superior orders" is not a defense for war crimes, although it might influence a sentencing authority to lessen the penalty.

Gaza City grave desecration

On May 10, 2004, Swastika-covered posters of (among others) Lynndie England were attached to British and Indian graves at the Commonwealth military cemetery in Gaza City. Thirty-two graves of soldiers killed in World War I were desecrated or destroyed.

England defends actions

In a May 11, 2004 interview with Denver CBS affilate television station KCNC-TV, England reportedly said that she was "instructed by persons in higher ranks" to commit the acts of abuse for psyop reasons, and that she should keep doing it, because it worked as intended. England noted that she felt "weird" when a commanding officer asked her to do such things as "stand there, give the thumbs up, and smile". However, England felt that she was doing "nothing out of the ordinary". (See the interview at [2].) On April 30, 2005, England recanted and admitted her criminal culpability.

Additional unreleased photographs

Members of the United States Senate reviewed additional photographs supplied by the Department of Defense which have not been publicly released. Senators note that there are photos of Pfc. England naked, having sex with several military guards, sometimes in front of the Iraqi prisoners.

Controversy over photographs

A number of the photographs of Lynndie England were never released by the Congress of the United States since they were considered unsuitable for the public to see. More importantly, the US military has now made much stricter rules on the use of camera phones and digital cameras in the war areas. Some believe that it is unlikely that any future event will be reported as easily. Others observe that such devices have become so small and ubiquitous that the regulations are unlikely to prove effective.

There have been accusations [3] that the Google search engine censored images of Lynndie England from its image search. Google has responded [4] that this is actually caused by delayed indexing and not deliberate censorship.

External links

• Google News: Lynndie England
• Symbol Of Shame? – a CBS News article, May 7, 2004
• A new monster-in-chief – The Observer article by Mary Riddell, May 9, 2004
• The Lynndie England Legal Defense Fund
• "Doing a Lynndie"