Iraq abuse insider disciplined

Had Declared Abu Ghraib Actions Were Under Orders

US Army sergeant who gave an insider's view of Abu Ghraib prison to the media has lost his security clearance and been disciplined by the military for speaking out, he said today.

Sergeant Samuel Provance said soldiers he served with in Iraq were treating him as a pariah, but that he would not change a thing if given a second chance.

"My soldiers who were at Abu Ghraib are so scared now they're not even talking to me any more - I'm like a villain, but would I do it again? Of course I would, because I stand behind what I said," Provance said in a telephone interview from Heidelberg, Germany, where his military intelligence unit is based.

"I knew what was being reported was not true."

Provance, 30, is with the 302nd Military Intelligence Battalion, a unit of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, which has been implicated in the alleged abuse at Abu Ghraib. The scandal broke after photographs were made public of US soldiers abusing prisoners, sparking worldwide outrage.

Unlike early reports suggesting the abuses were failings by individual soldiers, Provance said that interrogators at the prison viewed sleep deprivation, stripping inmates naked and threatening them with dogs as normal ways of dealing with "the enemy".