scandal escaped with just a reprimand, drawing rebuke from rights groups for a sham verdict, the Washington Post reported on Thursday, August 30.

"From my perspective, the evidence that was presented didn't support the allegations," said Brig. Gen. Louis Weber, the president of the military jury that prosecuted Army Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan.

Jordan, the only Army officer to face a court-martial for the detainee abuse at the Iraq jail, was exonerated of mistreating detainees.

The jury of nine colonels and a one-star general concluded that Jordan, 51, was not responsible for the actions of 11 lower-ranking soldiers who have already been convicted for abusing detainees.

The only charge from the week-long trial resulting in a conviction against Jordan was one count of willfully disobeying an order to keep silent about the abuse investigation.

However, the jury has spared him any prison time, ordering him a reprimand and a 7,200 dollar fine, the lightest sentence they could have recommended for the offense that carried a possible five-year jail term.

Weber described Jordan as "a superb leader and officer."

The verdict ends a series of prosecutions that stretched for more than three years over the scandal that shocked the world in April 2004.

The widely-publicized abuse pictures, including naked detainees stacked in a pyramid and others cowering before snarling dogs, had triggered international condemnation and damaged the reputation of the US army.

Shame verdict

Human rights groups that followed the case since 2004 lashed out at Jordan's sham prosecution.

"This was the one that everyone was waiting for," said Elisa Massimino, Washington director of Human Rights First.

"More than anything else, the trial and verdict in this case demonstrates that there is an enormous accountability gap left," she maintained.

"They have almost completely missed the real point."

The verdict means that no one in army's upper ranks will be imprisoned for the scandal, which President George W. Bush described in May 2006 as the "biggest mistake" made in Iraq.

In its Thursday's editorial, the New York Times lambasted the verdict as a last ditch to bury deep the scandal.

"The verdict was a remix of the denial of reality and avoidance of accountability that the government has used all along to avoid the bitter truth behind Abu Ghraib," wrote the influential daily.

John Sifton, a senior researcher at the Washington-based Human Rights Watch, agreed that the military lacked the will to get to the bottom of the abuse.

"The military was not interested in pursuing real accountability," he said.

"The only thing they've shown themselves committed to is putting the Abu Ghraib scandal behind them."

Retribution nightmares, family safety, traitor label, chronic anxiety and homesickness are the price US reservist Joe Darby is paying for his decision to report Abu Ghraib abuse.

Though promised anonymity, Darby was speechless when then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld blew his cover on national TV.

In the wake of the abuse scandal, American press said interrogation tactics amounting to torture were okayed by senior Pentagon officials, including Rumsfeld himself.

Unmasking the "sadistic and systematic" torture of Abu Ghraib detainee has cost Major General Antonio Taguba, the army general who investigated the scandal, his job.

He had concluded in his probe that senior Pentagon and administration officials, chiefly Rumsfeld if not Bush himself, did know about the grisly abuses. 

AMSI Net- Islamonline