A former inmate at Iraq's notorious Abu Ghraib prison said today he was beaten by US soldier Charles Graner while recovering from a bullet wound and called Graner the top torturer in the prison.
Speaking in video testimony at Graner's court-martial, Mr Ameed Al-Sheikh, a Syrian who said he went to Iraq to oppose the US occupation, declared, "Graner was the primary torturer."
Three soldiers in Graner's unit had testified yesterday about Graner's key role in stacking naked prisoners into a pyramid, putting a leash on a prisoner and other abuses in the highest security area of the prison just outside Baghdad.
Mr Al-Sheikh, who was well known in Abu Ghraib for having once obtained a gun from an Iraqi guard and exchanged fire with American soldiers, appeared wary in his testimony. "That Graner guy is a man who hurt his country, hurt his people and I think he will receive his punishment," he said.
He said Graner forced him to eat pork and drink alcohol, practices against his Islamic religion. During a break, Graner said outside court of the man, "The last time I saw him he was threatening to kill me."
Reservist Graner and Private Lynndie England, with whom he fathered a child and who is also facing a court-martial, became the faces of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal after they appeared smiling in photographs that showed degraded, naked prisoners.
The pictures further eroded the credibility of the United States already damaged in many countries by the Iraq invasion.
At the trial military prosecutors have presented evidence not seen before in public from Abu Ghraib, including a video of forced group masturbation and a picture of a woman prisoner ordered to show her breasts.