From Prensa Latina
US Torturer from Abu Ghraib Followed Orders, Lawyer Says
Washington, Jan 11 (Prensa Latina) The defense of US soldier Charles Graner, one of the US soldiers accused of torturing Iraqi citizens in the prison of Abu Ghraib, assures this soldier acted in fulfilment of his orders.
Defense lawyer Guy Womack said on Monday´s trial session Graner, 36 years old, did not do anything else than fulfilling his military mission, for which he should "be praised by his superiors" instead of being punished.
The oral process started Friday in Fort Hood, Texas, where the accused said he was "not guilty" of the charges.
Graner appeared in many of the photos showing abuse and violation to prisoners in Abu Ghraib, which were published at the beginning of 2004 by TV network CBS, and caused a great scandal in the entire world.
In several images, some of them showed before the court Monday, Graner is seen together with Iraqi tortured prisoners, to whom he kicked, humiliated, beat, and other damages, according to the charges.
He is also accused for conspiracy to torture prisoners, not fulfilling of his duties, aggression, assault and indecent actions, most of them showed in photographs.
Prior to the beginning of the trial, Womack told press media Graner had done exactly what it is supposed to do, according with the laws of war. He said Graner had asked for clarification of his mission to his superiors, and they assured him their orders were strictly legal.
If he were found guilty, Graner might be condemned up to 17 and half years of prison.
Graner had love relations with private Lyndie England, the woman who appears together with him in many pictures reflecting the torture carried out in Abu Ghraib.
In October 2004, England, who was already taken to trial, and waits for her sentence, gave birth to a child, who according to the prosecutors, is a fruit of her relationship with Graner.
Human rights defending organizations and lawyers assured the real responsible people for torture in Abu Ghraib and other prisons managed by US abroad have not been taken to trial yet.
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US Hunt for Banned Weapons in Iraq Came to an End
Washington, 12 – (PL) The US search for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in Iraq has ended about two years after President George W. Bush ordered the aggression on that Arab nation, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) ended the search for banned arms last month and its experts and analysts are back at Langley.
CIA officials said that violence in Iraq, along with a lack of new information and evidences on the existence of weapons of mass destruction, led them to fold up the effort shortly before Christmas.
Charles A. Duelfer, who led the weapons search in 2004, submitted an interim report to Congress that contradicted top Bush administration officials´ assertions that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program and had chemical and biological weapons, the main pretext used by the White House to invade the Arab country.
The US president has expressed disappointment that no weapons or weapons programs were found and has been reluctant to call off the hunt, holding out the possibility that weapons were moved out of Iraq before the war or are well hidden somewhere inside the country.
But the intelligence experts consider that possibility very small. The Government Printing Office will publish the final report in book form.
The ISG, established to search for weapons but now enmeshed in counterinsurgency work, remains under Pentagon command and is being led by Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Joseph McMenamin.
Congress allotted hundreds of millions of dollars for the weapons hunt, and there has been no public accounting of the money. A spokesman for the Pentagon"s Defense Intelligence Agency said the entire budget and the expenditures would remain classified.
Several hundred military translators and document experts will continue to sift through millions of pages of documents on paper and computer media sitting in a storeroom on a U.S. military base in Qatar.
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