FORT HOOD, Jan 10: A lawyer for Charles Graner, accused ringleader in the Iraq prisoner abuse scandal, defended piling naked prisoners in pyramids on Monday as valid prisoner control and compared it to shows by cheerleaders.

"Don't cheerleaders all over America form pyramids six to eight times a year. Is that torture?" Guy Womack, Charles Graner's attorney, said in opening arguments to the 10-member military jury at the reservist sergeant's court-martial.

Graner and Private Lynndie England, who too is facing a court martial, became the faces of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal after they appeared in photographs that showed degraded, naked prisoners.

The prosecution showed some of those pictures in their opening argument, including one of naked Iraqi men piled on each other and another of England holding a crawling naked Iraqi man on a leash.

Womack said using a tether was a valid method of controlling detainees. "You're keeping control of them. A tether is a valid control to be used in corrections," he said.

Pictures of the humiliating treatment of the prisoners at the prison outside Baghdad prompted outrage around the world and further eroded the credibility of the United States already damaged in many countries by the invasion.

Apart from arguing that the methods were not illegal, Graner's defense is that he was following orders from superiors. "He was doing his job. Following orders and being praised for it," Womack told the court.

The chief prosecutor, Maj. Michael Holley, asked rhetorically, "Did the accused honestly believe that was a lawful order?" The Bush administration has said the actions were those of a small group and were not part of a policy or condoned by senior officers.

But investigations have shown many prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan and at the US Navy base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba also suffered abusive treatment after the government considered ways to obtain information in the "war against terrorism".

The trial of Graner, a former Pennsylvania civilian prison guard who chatted and joked with his defense attorneys before the hearing opened, was expected to last at least a week.

Graner, 36, faces up to 17 years in prison on charges that include mistreating detainees, dereliction of duty and assault. He has pleaded not guilty. Four of seven accused members of Graner's unit have already pleaded guilty to abuse charges and three have been sentenced to prison.

British soldier's trial: The first court martial of a British soldier accused of mistreating Iraqi prisoners got underway on Monday at a military base in western Germany, in a case already dubbed "Britain's Abu Ghraib".

Gary Bartlam, a member of the Royal Fusiliers, is appearing at a military court at the regiment's base in Hohne, western Germany, north of Hanover, in a trial scheduled to run until Tuesday.

The court martial of three other members of the regiment, who are accused in the same case, was due to begin at nearby Osnabrueck on Wednesday. For legal reasons, no details of either of the courts martial can be published until further notice following an order by the court, confirmed a military official, who declined to be named.

The British press is calling the military trial "Britain's Abu Ghraib", after the Iraqi prisoner torture scandal involving US troops in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison on the outskirts of Baghdad.

Reports say Bartlam, 19, was arrested in Britain in mid-2003 after staff at a photographic store in Staffordshire, central England, tipped off police about so-called "trophy snaps" of his time in Iraq which he had asked them to develop.

The photographs were reported to show acts of torture inflicted on Iraqi prisoners in a food storehouse warehouse in Basra in southern Iraq, where the bulk of British forces are based. None of the images have been published and the contents of the roll of film have not been officially confirmed.

"The charges against the four include assault, indecent assault which apparently involves making the victims engage in sexual activity between themselves, and a military charge of prejudicing good order and military discipline," Britain's Attorney General, the government's top legal adviser, said in a statement to the upper house of parliament in June.

"The case concerns conduct alleged to have occurred whilst the civilians were being temporarily detained, but not in a prison or detention facility. It involves photographic evidence developed in this country and referred to the UK police," the statement said.

Britain's left-leaning Guardian newspaper had vowed in its Monday edition before the court martial opened to challenge any ban on divulging details of the trial. "The Guardian and a number of other media organisations will mount a legal challenge in the court today if the government attempts to prevent the details from becoming public," the paper said.

The daily cited defence sources who "confirmed that lawyers are considering arguing that the public airing of the abuse could provoke attacks on soldiers deployed in Iraq in the run-up to the elections, when violence against foreign troops is expected to escalate." -AFP