"Our defense is that Specialist (Charles) Graner was following orders," said Guy Womack, the military policeman's civilian attorney in the court martial proceedings that started at the Fort Hood army base in Texas Friday.

"There were very specific orders about doing some things and there were implicit orders about other things," said Womack, a former US marine.

"Most of those who gave the orders are invoking their right to remain silent," he told journalists outside the military courtroom.

Asked about officers called to testify at the court martial, he said: "There are going to be some commanders who gave the orders who are going to lie about it, but I think we can show they're lying."

Critics have pointed out that his defense bore similarities to that of Nazis tried at the Nueremberg war trials, many of whom claimed they were only following orders.

But Womack dismissed the comparison. "In Nueremberg we were trying generals who were giving orders, we were not trying privates, specialists ... Here we know that there are officers all the way up to at least a colonel who were giving orders and none of them was charged at all."

"If I were prosecuting this case, these people would be witnesses," he said in reference to Graner and other soldiers charged with prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib.

"They would be going after the officers and the senior enlisted who gave the orders and the officers and senior enlisted who saw what was going on and turned the other way," he said.

Arguments in Graner's trial are to start on Monday after a 10-man jury was selected on Friday.

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