WASHINGTON, May 24: Leading US lawmakers said they expected higher-ranking officials to face courts-martial in the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal, as a lawyer accused the top US military commander of observing some of the abuses.

Captain Robert Shuck, a military lawyer defending a soldier accused of abuse, testified in a military hearing that a captain at the Abu Ghraib prison said Lt Gen Ricardo Sanchez was present during some "interrogations and/or allegations of the prisoner abuse", according to the Washington Post.

The lawyer said he was told Gen Sanchez and other senior military officials were aware of the abuses, which the Red Cross has called tantamount to torture, the Post said, citing a recording of the hearing.

Captain Shuck also said a sergeant at the prison was prepared to testify that intelligence officials told him the abuse of detainees on the cellblock was "the right thing to do", the paper said.

In a stern statement released in Baghdad on Sunday, the military called the report "false". "This report is false, and Lt Gen Sanchez stands by his testimony before Congressional committees," the statement said.

Republican Senator Pat Roberts, who heads the Senate intelligence committee, said he would be "stunned" if the allegations were true. "I'd be stunned because, you know, General Sanchez is a straight-shooter. He is a general that has almost hero status," Pat Roberts said on CBS's "Face the Nation" programme.

Democratic Senator Jack Reed said he had no evidence that Gen Sanchez witnessed the abuses, "but what concerns me is not what he might have known, but what he should have known". "There was an International Committee for Red Cross report that went to his headquarters in November," Jack Reed said. -AFP