FORT MEADE, Md. — A military jury recommended a reprimand yesterday for the only officer court-martialed in the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal, sparing him any prison time for disobeying an order to keep silent about the abuse investigation.

The jury had acquitted Lieutenant Colonel Steven Jordan of the Army a day earlier of all three charges directly related to the mistreatment of detainees at the American-run prison in Iraq.

Those acquittals absolved Jordan, 51, of responsibility for the actions of 11 lower-ranking soldiers who have already been convicted for their roles at Abu Ghraib. The allegations surfaced after the release of photographs showing American soldiers grinning alongside naked detainees held in humiliating positions at the prison.

Jordan was convicted of a single charge: disobeying a general’s order not to discuss the abuse investigation. The defense conceded that Jordan sent an e-mail to a number of soldiers about the investigation after meeting with Major General George Fay in spring 2004.

“We believe that for Colonel Jordan, the vindication arises out of the ‘not guilty’ findings on the Abu Ghraib abuse charges, and we view that as very much a victory,” Major Kris Poppe, his attorney, said. Jordan could have been sentenced to up to five years in prison, though prosecutors had recommended a reprimand and a fine of one month’s pay, about $7,400.

The reprimand was the lightest sentence the jury could have recommended. Whether it will become part of Jordan’s permanent service record is up to the court-martial convening authority, Major General Richard Rowe, commander of the Military District of Washington. He will make the final sentencing decision after reviewing a written summary of the trial.

Major Poppe said Jordan would remain on active duty with the Intelligence and Security Command at Fort Belvoir, Va., through February, then consider retiring from a military career spanning 28 years.

Jordan, a reservist from Fredericksburg, Va., never appeared in any of the inflammatory photos, but as director of the prison’s interrogation center and the highest ranking officer there at the time, he had been accused of fostering a climate conducive to abuse. The prosecution had suggested that it wasn’t about what Jordan did at Abu Ghraib, but what he didn’t do.

The nine colonels and one brigadier general who made up the jury, however, found him not guilty of the three abuse-related charges: cruelty and maltreatment for subjecting detainees to forced nudity and intimidation by dogs; dereliction of a duty to properly train and supervise soldiers in humane interrogation rules, and failing to obey a lawful general order by ordering dogs used for interrogations without higher approval.

Those acquittals suggested that criminality went no higher than a former staff sergeant, Ivan Frederick, a military police reservist from Buckingham, Va., who is serving an eight-year sentence. A number of officers senior to Jordan were reprimanded administratively — but not convicted of crimes — for their roles at Abu Ghraib.

Hina Shamsi, deputy director of New York-based Human Rights First, said an “accountability gap” remains between the convicted soldiers and high-ranking military and government officials who sanctioned harsh interrogation techniques.

“None of the cases brought to date has given the systemic accounting the nation needs of what happened, why and how far up the chain of command responsibility lies,” Shamsi said. “It cries out for the kind of oversight and investigations that Congress can do.”