Prisoner-abuse soldier pictured having sex with guards

Private First Class Lynndie England has become the face of the scandal, with photographs showing her pointing at a naked Iraqi and holding another by a leash.

She has claimed she was following orders from senior personnel and that the pictures were used to terrify other inmates into talking.

But unpublished photographs show Pte England engaged in sex acts with other soldiers, some senators told the US television network NBC.

Some of the 100 senators who viewed hundreds of sickening pictures of prisoner abuse on Wednesday night also said there were images of naked Iraqi women among the photographs, which the Pentagon says will not be made publicly available.

"[Pte England] was having sex with numerous partners. It appeared to be consensual," said one senator.

"Almost everybody was naked all the time," another said.

Other senators branded the images of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison, near Baghdad, "disgusting". Oregon Senator Ron Wyden said: "I expected that these pictures would be very hard on the stomach lining, and it was significantly worse than anything that I had anticipated."

Some pictures showed Iraqi women commanded to expose their breasts.

"I don’t know how the hell these people got into our army," said Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, from Colorado. "There were several pictures of Iraqi women who were disrobed or putting their shirts up. They were not smiling in the pictures, that’s for sure. But it didn’t look like they had been beaten or hurt."

Another senator, Norm Coleman, said: "It was pretty disgusting, not what you’d expect from Americans. There was lots of sexual stuff - not of the Iraqis, but of our troops."

Pte England went on US television in a bid to defend herself. She said she was following orders when commanded to appear in photographs.

She told the KCNC-TV station: "I was instructed by persons in higher rank to stand there and hold this leash and look at the camera."

The reservist said the pictures were intended to put psychological pressure on the Iraqi prisoners to talk. She said military intelligence officers would tell the prison guards: "This is working. Keep doing it. It’s getting what we need."

She said: "We think everything was justified, because we were instructed to do this and to do that."

Meanwhile, more information has come to light on a bloody uprising among the prisoners at Abu Ghraib in November.

David Ruth, a military policeman, described how he shot dead a prisoner who was about to hurl a stone at him.

"It hurts me to this day what happened. I didn’t want to do what happened. But at that point in time it was either me or him," Mr Ruth said, explaining how he came to kill the man, shooting off part of his head.

The single most destructive spasm of violence at the prison took place in daylight on 24 November. By the end of the riot, three Iraqis had lost their lives and nine were wounded, Nine US soldiers were injured.