BAGHDAD, Oct 21: A US military court on Thursday sentenced a US army reservist to eight years in jail for abusing Iraqi detainees at the US-led Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.

Sergeant Ivan Frederick on Wednesday had pleaded guilty to charges of mistreating and conspiring to mistreat prisoners as well as dereliction of duty and indecent acts.

Judge Col James Pohl also reduced Frederick's rank to private and ordered his dishonourable discharge from he army.

Frederick's defence counsel Gary Myers announced he would appeal against what he termed an "excessive" sentence and argued that there had been a "corporate responsibility" for the abuse that took place at Abu Ghraib.

Frederick, a military policeman, is the highest ranking of seven accused prisoners involved in the abuse scandal that prompted worldwide condemnation when it emerged last April following a Red Cross investigation and a report by US journalist Seymour Hersh.

On Wednesday's hearing, Frederick had told the court how he had wrapped electric cables round the fingers of an Iraqi prisoner who had been stripped naked and made to stand on a cardboard box, threatening to give him electric shocks.

He had punched another prisoner in the chest so hard that that he collapsed, had forced three prisoners to act indecently as they stood naked against a wall, and had failed to prevent colleagues from piling naked prisoners into a human pyramid.

Asked by military judge James Pohl why he had acted thus, Frederick said he had sought to humiliate the prisoners. He told the court he knew his behaviour was wrong "because I knew it was a form of abuse".

However, the atmosphere in the prison had been chaotic, dangerous and extremely stressful. He also said that when he arrived at the prison, he already "noticed detainees naked, handcuffed to their doors, some wearing female underclothes".

Myers argued it was "the defence's point of view that there is corporate responsibility", echoing on-going public and media criticisms that the abuse appeared to be encouraged by superiors possibly as high as the US defence department.

Prosecutor Major Michael Holley, however, said the matter was a simple one between right and wrong, adding: "How much training do you need to learn that it's wrong to force a man to masturbate?"

The abuse scandal had come to light in April of this year, with a series of photos depicting the physical and sexual humiliation of naked Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers.-dpa