Soldier to Plead Guilty to Some Abu Ghraib Charges

HAGERSTOWN, Md. – One of the Army reservists charged with abusing Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib (search) prison said Monday that he will plead guilty to some offenses.

Staff Sgt. Ivan L. "Chip" Frederick (search), of the Maryland-based 372nd Military Police Company, said in a statement given to The Associated Press by his attorney: "I have accepted responsibility for my actions at Abu Ghraib prison. I will be pleading guilty to certain charges because I have concluded that what I did was a violation of law."

Frederick does not specify the charges to which he will plead guilty and it wasn't clear whether he will continue contesting any of the allegations. He is charged with maltreating detainees, conspiracy to maltreat detainees, dereliction of duty and wrongfully committing an indecent act.

Frederick, 37, of Buckingham, Va., has a pretrial hearing scheduled for Tuesday in Mannheim, Germany.

His civilian attorney, Gary Myers, did not immediately respond to e-mailed questions about Frederick's case. Telephone calls to Myers' hotel room in Mannheim went unanswered.

Frederick, a Virginia state prison guard in civilian life, is among seven members of the Cresaptown, Md.-based 372nd charged in the scandal, which involves physical abuse and sexual humiliation of prisoners.

He would be the second of the seven to admit wrongdoing. Spc. Jeremy C. Sivits (search), of Hyndman, Pa., pleaded guilty to three abuse charges in May and was sentenced to a year in prison.

Frederick, who worked as a prison guard in Virginia, was the senior enlisted soldier at the Abu Ghraib prison between October and December, when the mistreatment allegedly occurred.

He was among the first to be publicly identified by CBS' "60 Minutes II" when it broke the story April 28.

One of the photos from the prison shows him standing behind a naked prisoner smeared with feces. Frederick's family members have said that the inmate spread the feces on himself.

Frederick has claimed the abusive treatment -- inmates stripped naked, cuffed to their cells -- was orchestrated by military intelligence officers rather than MPs, according to a diary that his family made available.

In Mannheim on Monday, a military judge hearing evidence in the abuse cases demanded that prosecutors speed up the investigation. Col. James Pohl expressed displeasure after being told a lone Army criminal investigator was reviewing thousands of pages of records contained in a secret computer server at Abu Ghraib.