FORT HOOD, Texas -- Army Pfc. Lynndie R. England formally pleaded guilty yesterday to mistreating inmates at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.

	L.M. Otero, Associated Press Army Pfc. Lynndie England arrives for a court hearing at Fort Hood, Texas, yesterday, where she pleaded guilty to criminal charges arising from her role in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal. At rear left is her defense counsel, Rick Hernandez. Click photo for larger image. Related article What has happened to other reservists

Many of the seven counts related to her appearance in some of the most graphic photographs of the abuse that shocked the world last spring.

Under a deal she made with military prosecutors, the reservist from Fort Ashby, W.Va., will serve less than the maximum term of 11 years in prison that could result from her guilty plea. She had faced nine counts and could have received up to 16¹/₂ years. A military jury will decide her sentence this week.

England, 22, was perhaps the most familiar face in the notorious photos. She was pictured holding one inmate tethered to a leash. In another, she smiles and smokes a cigarette while pointing at a naked prisoner. Her involvement in a group of sexually humiliating scenarios went alongside images of military dogs attacking prisoners, soldiers carrying out physical assaults, and detainees being chained to their beds and cell doors in "stress positions."

The emergence of the Abu Ghraib photographs spawned nearly a dozen Defense Department and military inquiries into detainee abuse and focused an international spotlight on U.S. detention operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. While government officials initially tried to minimize the Abu Ghraib abuses as being at the hands of a few bad apples in the Army Reserve, the larger investigations revealed widespread abuses involving questionable and harsh interrogation tactics.

England's defense team has been arguing for nearly a year that her case was part of a bigger picture, initially trying to get top U.S. officials, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, to testify at her court martial about the nation's policies for handling and interrogating detainees. They argued England was simply doing as she was told and as a low-ranking soldier, she wasn't in a position to question her orders.

Still, in the end England negotiated a plea. But those careful arrangements almost went awry in the stark military courtroom yesterday when a skeptical Army judge raised questions about her admission of guilt.

In military law, a judge cannot accept a defendant's guilty plea without assurance that the plea is true.

England told the judge, Col. James L. Pohl, that she was sent to Iraq as a records clerk with the 372nd Military Police Company, based in Cumberland, Md., and had no training as a prison guard when the Army assigned her to work at Baghdad's toughest prison. When Pohl asked the defendant why she posed for the leash picture, she responded that she had been told to do so by then-Sgt. Charles A. Graner Jr, who was trained as a prison guard.

The photographs are central to the charges against her of conspiracy, dereliction of duty, maltreatment of subordinates and indecent acts.

At first England spoke so quietly that Pohl prompted her to speak up, complaining that his court reporter could not hear.

"Did you question this procedure?" the judge asked.

"I assumed it was OK," England replied, "because he was an MP [military police], he had the corrections officer background. He was older than me."

Pohl appeared troubled by her answer, noting she had to have knowledge her actions were wrong to be legally culpable. He told prosecutors that "it's going to be difficult to make a photograph of a lawful act into a crime."

After a brief recess for the lawyers to meet, England returned to the courtroom and said she knew at the time that use of the leash "was not only morally wrong but legally wrong. I had a choice, but I chose what my friends wanted me to do."

In a report on England's Article 32 hearing, akin to a civilian preliminary hearing, that was held in August at Fort Bragg, N.C., investigating officer Col. Denise J. Arn wrote that England was largely led astray by older soldiers in her unit, particularly Graner.

"From my review of the evidence, it is apparent that Pfc. England was, at the time of the offenses, the kind of person who was easily led," Arn wrote

"I have little doubt that her conduct was heavily influenced by her personal relationship with Cpl. Graner, a forceful, dominant, self-centered individual at least 12 years her senior."

Yesterday, England went on to say she had deliberately done wrong in posing for other pictures, including one that showed seven naked prisoners forced to form a human pyramid. "I knew it was wrong," she said. "Who would morally do something like that in a U.S. prison?"

In a sworn statement made one year ago this Thursday and obtained shortly thereafter by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, England matter-of-factly told Army criminal investigators at Fort Bragg, N.C., that no crimes were committed in the photographed abuse at Abu Ghraib. Indeed, she said, some of what occurred was even "funny."

In the statement, England implicated herself and five fellow members of the 372nd Military Police Company in varying degrees of abuse but contended they deserved no punishment because, she said, "We did what we were told,"

England conceded the MPs were never given specific orders on how to "break" the detainees for interrogation by military intelligence or other government agencies "but personnel from MI and OGA would tell us to keep it up, that we were doing a good job."

Moreover, she asserted that "everyone in the company, from the commander on down" knew what was occurring in the prison's Tier 1A, the highest security area.

"Was there anything done to those detainees that you felt was going too far?" an investigator asked her.

"No," she answered.

England becomes the eighth U.S. soldier to plead guilty or be convicted in relation to the Abu Ghraib abuses. Graner, the highest-ranking soldier implicated, was the only one to go to trial. Described by investigators as a ringleader of the abuse, he was convicted at a court martial in January and is serving a 10-year sentence.

No senior officer at the prison, and no one higher up in the chain of command, has faced charges in the case. Last week, the Army's inspector general exonerated four generals in Iraq of any blame for Abu Ghraib.

England became pregnant while in Iraq. Her child -- believed to be Graner's son -- is a few months old and is living with relatives. She told the judge yesterday that many of the photos in which she is seen standing beside naked Iraqi inmates were taken late on the night of Nov. 7, 2003. She said she had gone to Cell Block One-Alpha that night to celebrate with the guards there; the next day was her 21st birthday.