BAGHDAD, 12 September 2004 — The first American military intelligence soldier to be court-martialed over the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal was sentenced yesterday to eight months in jail, a reduction in rank and a bad-conduct discharge.
Specialist Armin Cruz, a military intelligence analyst, had pleaded guilty to maltreatment and conspiracy to maltreat detainees. The court martial accepted his guilty plea.
Cruz, 24, is the eighth person to be indicted for abusing Iraqi detainees in an affair which provoked worldwide outrage when it broke in April. He was the second to be sentenced.
In emotional testimony before being sentenced, Cruz told the court he took full responsibility for his actions, but he offered few explanations.
“I knew my actions were wrong,” he said. “There’s no way to justify it.”
As the first intelligence operative to be tried, Cruz’s case is significant because the Pentagon has said the abuse was the work of a few bad military police acting on their own accord, and not on the orders of intelligence officers.
Defense lawyers for some indicted soldiers say intelligence officers ordered military police to “soften up” prisoners ahead of interrogation, and that senior commanders knew about or even sanctioned the abuse.
In a report into the abuse by US Army Maj. Gen. George Fay issued last month, Cruz was identified as having taken part in the mistreatment of three prisoners at the jail. A photograph taken Oct. 25, 2003, showed Cruz and two other intelligence soldiers standing in the background as military police abused three prisoners in the foreground.
Cruz was awarded a Purple Heart after being wounded in a mortar attack on the prison in September 2003 and was nominated for a Bronze Star, an award that was suspended pending the abuse investigation.
