WASHINGTON — An Army dog handler was found guilty Tuesday of tormenting detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq with his snarling Belgian shepherd for his own amusement.
The soldier, Sgt. Michael J. Smith, 24, was found guilty on six of 13 counts, including conspiring with another Army dog handler to frighten detainees into urinating and defecating on themselves. Smith could face more than eight years in prison, forfeiture of pay and a dishonorable discharge.
A hearing to determine the sentence began Tuesday and will continue today.
The case of Smith, who is from Boynton Beach, Fla., is the latest in a long series arising from abuses committed by members of the U.S. military at Abu Ghraib. In addition to Smith, nine other low-ranking soldiers have been convicted of abusing detainees at Abu Ghraib.
A jury of four officers and three enlisted soldiers rejected Smith's defense that he was simply following orders and using a barking dog to keep prisoners in line.
The prosecution asserted that Smith treated inmates at Abu Ghraib inhumanely in late 2003 and early 2004. One of the most notorious images from the prison was of Smith holding his growling dog straining on its leash just inches from the face of a cowering orange-clad prisoner.
At issue in the dog-handler trial was a familiar refrain from similar courts-martial: Was the misconduct unsanctioned abuse by a rogue soldier or part of a pattern of harsh interrogation techniques approved by military commanders in Baghdad and senior government officials in Washington?
Smith's weeklong trial at Fort Meade, Md., failed to resolve this debate. One of the witnesses, the former military intelligence chief at Abu Ghraib, Col. Thomas M. Pappas, had been considered a possible link between the abusive tactics used at the prison and his superiors in Baghdad and Washington.
Pappas said during testimony last week that he had learned that military working dogs were an effective interrogation tool from a team of intelligence officials visiting Iraq in September 2003 from the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But Pappas, testifying for the defense under a grant of immunity, said the Army lacked clear rules for using dogs in interrogations at Abu Ghraib, and he took personal responsibility for failing to ensure that military police and intelligence officers were properly trained in using dogs.