Can love explain abuse?

FORT HOOD, United States: Isolated amid the chaos and often bizarre life inside Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, Lynndie England posed in now notorious abuse photographs because she loved and trusted the scandal ringleader, her lawyer said at the start of her court-martial on Wednesday (local time).

England, 22, who was pictured holding a leash to a naked Iraqi prisoner, was lured into posing for the photographs that caused worldwide outrage by Charles Graner, the father of her baby, said military attorney Captain Jonathan Crisp.

"What mattered to her was her relationship to Corporal Graner," said Crisp, who added that Graner was her superior officer, was 14 years older than England and had worked as a prison guard.

"She thinks: 'I love him, he loves me, he's not going to do something to hurt me,"' Crisp said in opening arguments.

The Army reservist faces a maximum penalty of 11 years in jail if convicted on all seven counts on charges of conspiracy, maltreatment of subordinates and indecent acts.

A military jury sentenced Graner to 10 years in prison earlier this year, and since his incarceration he has married another woman who pleaded guilty in the scandal.

England, a clerk with no official duties in the section of the prison where the abuses occurred, also posed with Graner in front of a pyramid of naked Iraqi prisoners.

In his opening arguments, prosecutor Chuck Neill said England was an active participant who enjoyed the scenes portrayed on camera, and at one point shouted out that a prisoner forced to masturbate was showing signs of arousal.

The trial started on Wednesday with jury selection in which many of the possible jurors were familiar with the case and some had served in Iraq.

England is the last to be tried among a group of soldiers in the abuse scandal. Six have pleaded guilty and two others, including Graner, have been convicted at trial.

Source: China Daily