Kin defend accused officer in photos

FOUNTAIN, W.Va. -- The sister of Private First Class R. Lynndie England, faced with worldwide condemnation of the sibling she loves, yesterday denounced the news media and military establishment's rush to judgment in the young soldier's case.

And Sabrina D. Harman, like England a military police officer at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, told The Washington Post this week that their job was to ''make it hell" for detainees ''so they would talk," the Post reported in today's editions.

The military charged England yesterday with assaulting Iraqi prisoners and conspiring to mistreat them. But her sister, Jessica Klinestiver, said the pictures documenting the degrading treatment of detainees -- pictures in which her sister is often the jaunty star -- present a false image of what England might have done.

''I don't believe my sister did what she did in those photos," said Klinestiver, 24, flanked by the family's lawyer and faced with more than three dozen reporters at a news conference outside a local fire station. ''She posed."

Klinestiver, wearing a black and gold US Army Reserves T-shirt, declined to offer an explanation for why her sister would pose with naked Iraqi prisoners, or to say whether she thought the six other soldiers featured in the photographs were also posing. Asked about her sister's smiling expression in the photographs, she said that England was not smiling at the treatment of the prisoners but at ''who was behind the camera."

''She was told to follow orders, and that is what she did," said Klinestiver.

In e-mails from Baghdad this week, Harman said interrogators -- not guards -- set the conditions for prisoners' treatment, The Washington Post reported.

According to the Post, Harman said Army intelligence officers, CIA operatives, and contractors would deliver prisoners to Abu Ghraib. ''They would bring in one to several prisoners at a time already hooded and cuffed," the article quoted Harman saying. ''The job of the MP was to keep them awake, make it hell so they would talk."

The Post reported that the Army has accused Harman, 26, of Alexandria, Va., of photographing nude detainees and a corpse, striking prisoners by jumping on them, writing ''rapeist" on a prisoner's leg, and attaching wires to a prisoner and threatening him with electrocution.

According to the article, her mother, Robin Harman, said Harman, the daughter of a homicide detective, grew up around forensic photos and took the pictures to document improper conditions.

In addition to England and Harman, five other soldiers from the 372d Military Police Company, a reserve unit based just over the nearby Maryland border, face possible court-martial.

England, 21, faces four allegations, according to a statement from the XVIII Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg. She is accused of ''assaulting Iraqi detainees on multiple occasions"; conspiring with another soldier, Specialist Charles A. Graner Jr., to mistreat the prisoners; committing an indecent act; and committing acts ''that were prejudicial to good order and discipline and were of nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces through her mistreatment of Iraqi detainees."

She is currently at Fort Bragg, N.C., where she was apparently sent because she is 17 weeks pregnant, according to the family's lawyer, Roy Hardy.

Her alleged co-conspirator, Graner, is the baby's father, Hardy said at the news conference. Graner, 35, of Uniontown, Pa., a former Marine, and England, 21, fell in love some time shortly before they were sent overseas last May, according to friends and neighbors. In one of the photographs, the two appear grinning, arm in arm, as they hold their thumbs up over a pile of naked Iraqis.

England's best friend, Destiny Goin, 21, also spoke at yesterday's conference. Of the photos, Goin said, ''I do believe they were posed. I don't believe Lynndie would do any of the actions you see in the photographs."

England has talked several times with family members and her lawyer by telephone from Fort Bragg, and she is confined to the city limits of Fayetteville, said Hardy. He said her present job at the base is ''cleaning walls."

If world opinion has all but condemned the apparent misdeeds by some reservists of this rural region, many in West Virginia are not so sure. This is proud country, a place of American flags and church spires and military tradition, a place where if you do not join the Reserves, you surely know someone who did. England's family, who live in a beige trailer festooned with yellow ribbons and an American flag in nearby Fort Ashby, are not the only ones who feel that at least some of the soldiers are being scapegoated.

''I admire them for what they did. They were just trying to break them down," said Kenny Flanagan, 62, a close friend of the family. ''The dummies just shouldn't have taken pictures of it."

So, too, do others feel the reservists are being harshly judged.

''Most people around here say they would have done the same thing," said Lisa Fox, a mother of three who lives in a nearby trailer park. She compared the treatment of the Iraqi prisoners to the mob killing and dismemberment of American civilian contractors in the embattled city of Fallujah. ''I'm sure they treated our prisoners the same way; just no one found out about it. And look at the contractors -- they're dead."

At the news conference, several photographs of England and her family were displayed on a table, including a large portrait of her beaming in her military garb.

There were several of her with family members and one of her cheek to cheek with Graner on the beach. Hardy said he brought the pictures because, ''I just want you to realize that Lynndie is a human being."

Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.