The first US soldier to have revealed the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad testified on Friday that it was a "moral call."

Testifying on the fourth day of a pretrial hearing for Private Lynndie England at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Sergeant Joseph Darby said through telephone that he was "shocked and bewildered and didn't know what to do" when he saw the photos.

Darby said he received a CD containing the abuse photos from Corporal Charles Graner at the beginning of December last year. "It was a tough decision because these people were my friends," said Darby, who was in the 372nd Military Police Company that was responsible to guard the Abu Ghraib prison.

Darby said that after agonizing for more than a month about what to do with the photos, he turned them over to Army investigators on Jan. 13, just before Graner was due to return to duty. "It was more of a moral call," he said.

England was one of six people facing a possible court martial for abusing Iraqi detainees at the facility.

Darby said he never saw England engaged in any abusive acts, but he had seen her enter the cell block area where the abuses occurred and she had no reason to go.

England, 21, was the most well known among those charged in the abuse scandal because of a photo showing her holding a leash around a naked Iraqi detainee's neck.

England's defense team has said that the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib was systematic and approved by senior officers, and has submitted a list of 158 witnesses it wanted to appear in the court, including Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the former top US commander in Iraq, and Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, who ran Abu Ghraib.

The pregnant female soldier is charged with 13 counts of abusing detainees and six counts stemming from possession of sexually explicit photos, and is facing up to 38 years in prison. The hearing could result in a non-judicial punishment, the dismissal of all charges or a referral to a court-martial.

Source: Xinhua