FORT HOOD, Jan 15: A military jury on Friday convicted Specialist Charles Graner of beating and humiliating Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib in a scandal documented in sordid photographs that caused world wide outrage.

The 10 jurors found Graner guilty of abuses and could sentence him to as many as 15 years in prison and discharge him from the army. He did not testify before the verdict was passed but could do so before sentencing, which the jury was expected to decide by early Saturday.

Several witnesses appeared after the verdict, including Hussein Mutar, a detainee at Abu Ghraib who said in a videotaped deposition that he wanted to kill himself following the sexual humiliations to which Graner subjected him.

"The Americans came to free the Iraqi people from Saddam, I didn't think this would happen," the suspected car thief said of the abuses. He pointed to the notorious photographs of a smiling Graner and other military policeman standing by naked detainees in humiliating positions at the US-run prison near Baghdad.

The pictures stirred world wide outrage and severely harmed the reputation of the US troops in Iraq when they were published early last year. -AFP