A Small-Town Soldier on Trial

Spec. Jeremy Sivits of Hyndman, Pa., Is About to Face Court-Martial in Abuse Scandal

HYNDMAN, Pa. -- In the early mornings before school, Jeremy Sivits ran through the streets of this hillside hamlet wearing his backpack to strengthen his shoulders for wrestling season. In the evenings, when the sun would set over the Appalachian Mountains and draw residents out to their front porches, he would nod hello and smile.

He had "sir, ma'am" manners and mediocre grades. He was a typical kid of limited means and modest goals who joined the Army eager to serve, as his father had in Vietnam, said friends and acquaintances. But after more than a year in Iraq, Sivits was getting homesick -- so much so that he was considering quitting the Army when he got home, he wrote his friends. He wanted to be back with his new wife and maybe coach his high school's baseball team.

Instead, the 24-year-old specialist of the Cresaptown, Md.-based 372nd Military Police Company is still in Iraq, where he is about to become the first soldier from his unit to stand trial in the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse case. His court-martial, scheduled for Wednesday, is to take place in the Baghdad Convention Center so authorities can accommodate a media crush that will make the bashful auto mechanic nicknamed "Puggs" the latest public face of the scandal.

Sivits emerged as a central character this week when two sworn statements he gave to investigators became public. Sivits detailed how members of his unit beat and embarrassed detainees at Abu Ghraib prison. In the statements, given in January, he describes how his fellow soldiers laughed as they piled naked detainees on top of one another and forced them to masturbate, while admitting that he took pictures of some of the abuse and did not report the mistreatment.

"I was laughing at some of the stuff they had them do," he said of the way the guards treated the detainees. "I was disgusted at some of the stuff as well. As I think about it now, I do not think any of it was funny."

At another point he added: "I should have said something."

The accusations he levels in the statements have been dismissed as self-serving and spurious by some of the lawyers representing the other six soldiers who have been charged in the case. Sivits has offered to plead guilty and could testify against the others in exchange for a lighter sentence, they said.

Until now, it has been some of the other members of his unit whose images have been synonymous with the abuse at Abu Ghraib. In the famous photographs there is Pfc. Lynndie R. England holding a naked man by a leash, and Spec. Sabrina D. Harman standing over a pile of naked detainees. One of the soldiers in another photo of naked detainees is Spec. Charles A. Graner Jr., Graner's attorney told the Wall Street Journal.

Lawyers representing some of the soldiers facing charges have taken their defense to newspapers and prime-time television. The family of Staff Sgt. Ivan L. "Chip" Frederick II has even set up a Web site to bolster the campaign.

Sivits's family, by contrast, has bunkered down in its frame house with peeling paint, a shaky screen door and a slouching shed in the yard across from train tracks. Besides granting a few interviews in the days after the abuse scandal became public, Sivits's relatives have shunned the media. They parked a 30-foot-long tractor-trailer on the curb in the front of the house, shielding their home from photographers' zoom lenses.

Daniel Sivits, Jeremy Sivits's father, who friends said is retired and lives on a modest pension, said late last month that the family could not afford to hire a civilian lawyer. On Thursday, Daniel Sivits again declined to comment, but said the family has been left in the dark about the case. "You all in the media know more about this than we do," he said.

Jeremy Sivits was no older than 5 when his family moved to Hyndman, friends said. By then, the trains had already begun bypassing Hyndman as a business stop, and the railroad jobs that once drove the local economy had vanished. But trains still clank through the town, making the silverware at Junee's diner on Center Street clatter and sending ripples through coffee cups.

"We're mostly a bedroom community now," Hyndman Mayor Del Biller said.

The downtown is one block and has a two-pump gas station, one bank, one used-car dealership and a traffic light that blinks red. It's a dry town: Liquor sales are illegal.