THE picture of Specialist Charles Graner, the ringleader in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, giving the thumbs-up in front of a dead Iraqi is not as famous as those of detainees stacked in a human pyramid of naked flesh, held on a dog leash or hooded and wired up for mock execution.

Yet the image of the corpse wrapped in polythene, his right eye bandaged, his nose broken and his mouth open as if gasping for his last breath, signifies that darker practices than sadistic games have taken place inside American-run jails in Iraq.

It is part of growing evidence that some detainees have been tortured and beaten to death by American forces.

On Friday Graner, 36, was convicted of assault, battery, maltreatment, committing indecent acts and dereliction of duty after a military court heard that he had brutalised prisoners for “sport” and “laughs”. Last night he was jailed for 10 years.

Graner showed no reaction when the sentence was read out. Asked on his way to jail if he had any regrets, he replied: “Maybe you missed that there’s a war on. Bad things happen in war. Apparently I followed an illegal order.”

This week Graner’s girlfriend and smiling accomplice, Lynndie England, faces her own court martial.

Neither of them was responsible for any deaths of detainees. But away from the media spotlight, an unidentified Navy Seal lieutenant was accused in pre-trial hearings in San Diego, California, last week of assaulting and maltreating the Iraqi in the photograph, Monathel al-Jamaily, who died in November 2003. One witness testified that he had seen a CIA officer and several Seals kick, punch and gouge the eyes of al-Jamaily. Another brushed away tears as he described the accused naval lieutenant as a “good man” and a “hero”.

What is not disputed is that al-Jamaily, 43, a father of three, died under interrogation by the CIA in the shower room at Abu Ghraib a few hours after he was apprehended. Doctors said the cause of death was “blunt force injuries complicated by compromised respiration”.

In Iraq the deaths in custody have dealt a terrible blow to America’s moral authority. Al-Jamaily’s sister, Montaha, is still shocked.

“We looked for him for seven months in different prisons. Then we saw his picture on TV. That’s how we found out,” she said in Baghdad last week. “They wouldn’t give us his body so we hired a lawyer. It was four months before we received the body.”

The Pentagon has admitted to five detainee deaths as a result of abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan, with a further 23 under investigation. These figures may be revised upwards when a report on interrogation methods from Guantanamo Bay to Afghanistan and Iraq by Vice-Admiral Albert Church is released next month. Mark Danner, author of Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib and the War on Terror, which is published in Britain next month, said the administration of George W Bush was anxious to publicise the case against Graner at the expense of others.

“Here was a criminal who committed crimes and is being brought to justice. It fits their theory of a few bad apples. The photographs, in their grotesqueness, look so outlandish that it’s hard to believe the torture might be procedural.”

Danner believes the deaths of prisoners tell another story. In August 2002 Jay Bybee of the US Justice Department offered a startling legal opinion to Alberto Gonzales, the White House counsel since nominated for attorney-general.

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