Atty: Court-martial For Lynndie

Army Pfc. Lynndie England, who has come to symbolize the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal, will face a court-martial, one of her lawyers said.

The Army will announce the court-martial on Monday and may schedule the military trial to begin in January, defense attorney Rhidian Orr said Friday.

An Army spokesman at Fort Bragg, where England has been assigned while her case is pending, confirmed that a decision regarding the case is scheduled to be released Monday. The decision rests with Lt. Gen. John Vines, commander of the 18th Airborne Corps at the post.

England, 21, is one of seven members of the 372nd Military Police Company of Cresaptown, Md., charged with the abuse that occurred last year at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. Photographs were transmitted around the world showing the reservist holding a naked prisoner by a leash, smiling and pointing at a hooded detainee's genitals and posing behind a pyramid of nude Iraqis.

Although the court-martial was not a surprise, "Lynndie's case is a heck of a lot stronger than it used to be," he said.

Orr did not say what charges his client will face, but hearing officer Col. Denise Arn has recommended that England be court-martialed on 17 counts of abuse and indecent acts.

Military prosecutors portray the abuse as the work of a renegade band of reservists.

Arn suggested England was largely led astray by some of the other reservists charged in the case, particularly Spc. Charles Graner Jr.

Attorneys say Graner is the father of the child England expects to deliver in October.

England's attorneys argued in the hearing that she posed for the pictures on orders from higher-ups to "soften up" Iraqi prisoners. Her lawyers sought unsuccessfully to call such high-level witnesses as Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.