US Army reservist Lynndie England, pictured holding a naked Iraqi on a leash in an act of humiliation in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, pleaded guilty to seven charges of abuse on Monday. Pfc. England, who appeared in photographs that touched off an international furor at a time when the United States was under pressure over the 2003 Iraq invasion, pleaded guilty to seven charges that can carry a maximum sentence of 11 years.
Questioned by the judge, Colonel James Pohl, about the incident portrayed in the leash picture, England, 22, said she had visited that section of the sprawling prison to see Sgt. Charles Graner, with whom she was involved sexually.
"(Graner) handed me the leash and said hold this, I'm going to take a picture," the diminutive soldier said. "He wanted it to look more ... humiliating if a female of my size would hold it."
She added: "I assumed it was OK because he was an MP (military policeman). He had the background as a corrections officer and with him being older than me I thought he knew what he was doing."
Graner, a former prisons office by whom England has since had a child, was sentenced to 10 years in prison by a military tribunal in January for his part in the abuse.
Under a plea deal, two of the nine charges against England, who had low-level clerk duties at Abu Ghraib, were dropped. The sentencing phase will start on Tuesday with the selection of a military jury.
England, of Fort Ashby, West Virginia, said she was just followed orders and her lawyer, Captain Jonathan Crisp, has said he hopes she will receive a reduced punishment.
The Pentagon has cleared all but one of the top five commanders at Abu Ghraib of any wrongdoing, despite concern that a drive to squeeze information out of detainees initiated at a high level created the atmosphere in which the abuses could occur.
England was the seventh guard at the prison outside Baghdad to plead guilty to abusing prisoners.
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