FORT HOOD, Texas – Private First Class Lynndie England, the young woman pictured grinning, giving a thumbs-up, and holding a naked Iraqi by a leash in some of the most notorious photos to come out of the Abu Ghraib scandal, pleaded guilty yesterday to mistreating prisoners.

Wearing her dress green Army uniform and speaking somberly in a soft voice, the 22-year-old Army reservist told the judge that she initially resisted taking part in the abuse at the Baghdad prison but ultimately caved in to pressure from her comrades.

“I had a choice, but I chose to do what my friends wanted me to,” she said, entering her pleas a day before the start of her trial.

The charges carry up to 11 years in prison, but prosecutors and the defense reached an agreement for a lesser sentence. A military jury will convene today to determine her punishment; she will get the lesser of the jury’s sentence or the term agreed on in the plea bargain.

If she had been convicted as charged, she could have gotten 16 1/2 years behind bars.

The judge asked her about a photo depicting her smiling and pointing at a naked detainee’s genitals while smoking a cigarette. England said she replied “No, no way” at first when a fellow soldier asked her to pose for the picture.

“But they were being very persistent, bugging me, so I said, ‘Okay, whatever,'” she told the judge.

The plea bargain settles one of the most prominent cases to come out of the Abu Ghraib scandal, which damaged the image of America’s military and sparked outrage against America around the globe.

England became a central figure in the scandal after photos emerged last year showing her and others sexually humiliating Iraqi prisoners.

One of the photos showed her holding a hooded, naked prisoner on a leash. Another showed her smiling and giving a thumbs-up next to nude prisoners stacked in a pyramid. A third depicted England pointing at the prisoner’s genitals as a cigarette dangled from her lips.

England’s lawyers have argued that she and others in her military police unit were acting on orders from military intelligence to “soften up” prisoners for interrogation. But Army investigators testified during hearings last summer that England said the reservists took the photos while “they were joking around, having some fun.”

The judge, Colonel James Pohl, went through each photo while asking England about her actions at Abu Ghraib in the fall of 2003.

She told the judge that Private Charles Graner Jr., the reputed ringleader of the abuses and the man said to be the father of England’s infant son, put the leash around the prisoner’s neck in order to take him from one cell to another.

When the prisoner resisted, she told the judge, Graner said to her: “Hold this, I’m going to take a picture.”

Colonel Pohl asked if she thought the leash was a legitimate way to control the detainee. “I assumed it was okay” because he was an MP, England said of Graner. “He had a background as a corrections officer.”