WASHINGTON, May 11: The abuse of Iraqi prisoners reflected a failure of leadership and discipline in the US armed forces, the general who investigated the mistreatment testified on Tuesday , but he said he found no evidence that American soldiers had acted on direct orders of higher-ups.

Asked directly in "your own soldier's language" what had caused the abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison, once the feared symbol of Saddam Hussein's dictatorial rule, US Army Maj-Gen Antonio Taguba recited a litany of ills.

"Failure in leadership, sir, from the brigade commander on down, lack of discipline, no training whatsoever and no supervision. Supervisory omission was rampant," Taguba, the author of a Pentagon report on the abuse, told the latest Senate hearing on the scandal, which has drawn world-wide outrage.

Taguba told the Senate Armed Services Committee he did "not find any evidence of a policy or a direct order given to these soldiers to conduct what they did. I believe that they did it on their own volition."

But he also said Brig Gen Janis Karpinski, who was in charge of the prison when the abuses took place last year, was the highest ranked officer he had interviewed. -Reuters