FORT MEADE, June 2: A US army dog handler was demoted and sentenced to 90 days of hard labour on Friday for using his dog to assault a prisoner at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Sgt Santos Cardona, 32, of Fullerton, California, the 11th US soldier convicted for abusing Abu Ghraib detainees, also will have to forfeit $7,200 in pay, an army spokeswoman said. He will not be confined during the term of hard labour but will be demoted to specialist.

A US military court-martial panel of four officers and three enlisted personnel convicted Cardona on Thursday of two counts that could have led to 3 1/2 years in prison — failing to handle his dog properly and using the unmuzzled Belgian shepherd to threaten a detainee with a force “likely to produce death or grievous bodily harm.”

He was cleared on seven other counts, including accusations of letting his dog bite a prisoner and of conspiring with another dog handler to frighten inmates into defecating and urinating on themselves.

Cardona’s defense attorneys had sought to portray him as a victim of unclear orders and an ambiguous chain of command that silently condoned using dogs to terrorize Iraqi prisoners in hopes of getting more intelligence out of them.

Cardona’s verdict and sentencing come as the military investigates new allegations that US Marines killed 24 Iraqi civilians in an unprovoked attack in November in the town of Haditha. The US military also is investigating four other cases in which US troops are alleged to have killed Iraqi civilians.—Reuters