First soldier to go on trial next week

BAGHDAD -- The first court-martial of a soldier accused in the Abu Ghraib abuses will be held in central Baghdad next week under the full glare of international media coverage, US officials announced yesterday as they moved quickly to try to contain the prison scandal that has rocked Washington and inflamed the Arab world.

Specialist Jeremy C. Sivits, 24, a member of the 372d Military Police Company, will stand trial May 19, in the first of six expected courts-martial.

Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, deputy chief of US military operations in Iraq, said that in an effort to stop the scandal from further mobilizing Iraqi insurgents, all the trials will be "as transparent as possible," with US officials organizing maximum access for the news media. "They must be truly open," he said.

In what is sure to be a major media event, closed-circuit television monitors also will relay the proceedings to journalists in overflow rooms, he said.

As the scandal continued to ripple through Baghdad yesterday, Iraq's recent surge in fighting hit the capital, killing dozens of people in gunfire and bomb attacks.

Armed militia loyal to radical Shi'ite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr fought gun battles against US soldiers in the sprawling neighborhood of Sadr City, on the northeast edge of Baghdad. US officials said they had killed about 18 fighters of Sadr's Mahdi Army.

Also yesterday, coalition spokesman Dan Senor told reporters that the top US administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, had raised concerns about detainees "on multiple occasions over the past year" with top Bush administration officials, including Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld. Senor said Bremer also discussed the problems with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and "principals" in the National Security Council.

"It was something that everybody was aware of, everybody was concerned about," he said at a joint news conference with Kimmitt. Senor said there was particular concern about prison crowding, with a logjam in processing and releasing thousands of Iraqi detainees who languished in US military custody. "It's safe to say that everybody was quite aware of the situation," Senor said.

But according to Senor's account, US military commanders apparently did not initially give Bremer details of the abuse and Bremer did not know about the sexual humiliation and other abuses until US military officials in Baghdad issued a news release Jan. 16, saying they were investigating some soldiers. "That is when he first learned of it," Senor said.

Bremer also did not see the explosive prison-abuse photographs until they were aired April 28 on the CBS news program "60 Minutes II" -- three months after the military investigation began, Senor said. The pictures, which provoked the scandal that has consumed the Bush administration for 10 days, show naked prisoners alongside smiling US soldiers. Senor told reporters that Bremer has "not seen any video," which is thought to have been uncovered in the military investigation.

Considering the volcanic effects in both Washington and Iraq from the abuse allegations, the charges Sivits faces at his court-martial carry relatively minor sentences. If convicted on all three charges, he could face a year in jail, reduction in his rank, and loss of two-thirds of his military pay for a year.

Sivits, of Hyndman, Pa., is charged with maltreating detainees, conspiracy to maltreat detainees, and failing to protect detainees from abuse by other soldiers.

In the fighting in Baghdad yesterday, men with hooded faces were seen on television running through the streets of Sadr City, brandishing Kalashnikov rifles as barricades burned nearby. The fighting erupted after US forces stormed Sadr's local office on the main street of Sadr City, which is home to about 2 million Shi'ites. They arrested two of Sadr's top officials, including Amir al-Husseini, who told a Globe reporter Tuesday that the militia would not end its armed insurgency against US forces. "Our goal is to get the occupiers out of our beloved Iraq," he said.

In Baghdad yesterday morning, two homemade bombs exploded in a crowded marketplace, killing about five Iraqis and wounding 17, including five Iraqi policemen, according to Iraq's Health Ministry. The policemen had been trying to dismantle the bombs when they exploded. They told reporters afterward that they thought they were the real target of the attack.

"Is this the freedom that they want -- people cut into pieces?" Fadhil Farid told the Associated Press, as he stood amid the rubble. "What did we do wrong?"

In southern Iraq, US and British forces again battled Sadr's militia, who have been holed up in heavily Shi'ite cities for weeks. American soldiers sealed off the road linking Najaf to the neighboring community of Kufa. And four Iraqi civilians were killed when a British helicopter fired on houses in Amara, according to AP. Sadr's fighters battled British forces in that city Saturday.

With such battles threatening to become a far larger conflict, a Shi'ite political official told a Globe reporter yesterday that "intensive talks" were underway behind the scenes to try to mediate a cease-fire between the firebrand Sadr and US forces. Those talks involved top US officials, and representatives of the reclusive Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, he said.

"We tell them [US officials] that they should not allow commanders to enter into military action inside the cities," said Sa'ad Jawad Kindeel, 49, a political official of the major Shi'ite party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. "US officials want us to guarantee that Sadr will hold to a cease-fire. We cannot guarantee that."

As US officials battled yesterday to stop the prison abuses from becoming a rallying point for insurgents across Iraq, Kimmitt said that Sivits's hearing could offer Iraqis an object lesson in American democracy -- something he hoped would win them over.

"We have a tremendous amount of pride in the military and the American legal system," he said at the news briefing. "It is not our intention to hide anything."

US officials have chosen to hold the hearing in the Baghdad Convention Center, to which Iraqi journalists have access and where several Arabic channels maintain offices. Those media have grown increasingly hostile to the US occupation.

Sivits's hearing will be a startling new chapter for the modern complex, which has two large auditoriums and an airy atrium. For years, the halls were a meeting point for Ba'ath Party officials and military leaders, where Saddam Hussein awarded medals and called conferences. Nowadays, the building is heavily guarded, surrounded by US soldiers posted in sandbagged towers and behind barbed wire.