WASHINGTON, April 29: A US military intelligence official was charged with cruelty and maltreatment of prisoners on Friday for allegedly using military working dogs without permission to frighten detainees at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison.

Lt Col Steven Jordan, who led a military intelligence unit that conducted interrogations at the Iraq prison, is the highest ranking official to be charged with criminal offences in the two-year-old Abu Ghraib scandal.

An army charge sheet cited him for cruelty and maltreatment, saying Jordan “did oppress Iraqi detainees, persons subject to his orders, by subjecting them to forced nudity and intimidation by military working dogs’.

He faces a total of 12 counts on seven charges. Besides cruelty and maltreatment of prisoners, they included disobeying a superior official, dereliction of duty, making false official statements, fraud, wrongful interference with an investigation, and false swearing. The charges together carry a maximum possible prison term of 42 years.

However, the cruelty and maltreatment charge carries a maximum sentence of only one year in prison.

“The US Army has been conducting an investigation into this matter for over two years,” an army official said.

“These things take time. They have to be done in a thorough and professional manner.”

The scandal exploded into public view in 2004 after US news organisations made public now-notorious photographic images showing detainees at Abu Ghraib being humiliated and abused by guards.

The charge sheet said Lt Gen Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of US forces in Iraq at the time, had issued an order requiring his permission to use ‘certain specified interrogation and counter-resistance techniques in the interrogation of detained Iraqi prisoners under his control, to include: use of military working dogs’.

Col Jordan knew of the order but failed to obtain Gen Sanchez’s permission to use the dogs in interrogations, and then lied about it in subsequent statements to investigators, the charge sheets allege.

Col Jordan was not accused of personally mistreating prisoners. But he was ‘derelict in the performance of those duties in that he wilfully failed to train, supervise and ensure compliance by soldiers under his control’ based on official interrogation policy, the charge sheet alleged.

The alleged abuse occurred between Sept 17 and Dec 24, 2003.

Maj Gen Antonio Taguba, who conducted the first investigation into the abuse scandal, questioned Col Jordan in Kuwait on Feb 24, 2004. —AFP