"Neither Colonel (Chris) Terrington or any other British officer was aware of specific allegations about abuses within Abu Ghraib until after the period when they were being investigated," a defence ministry spokesman told AFP.

Terrington and Colonel Campbell James were "embedded within" the US unit responsible for extracting information from Iraqi prisoners, Britain's Guardian newspaper said Thursday.

According to the newspaper, the two men were named in February by a US officer accused in the scandal as being his immediate supervisors.

Britain's defence ministry denied the allegations Thursday.

"They had no responsibilty for any of the running of the prison or for any other US personnel working within it," the spokesman told AFP.

But he did confirm that from November 2003 when many of the prison abuses occurred, Terrington was based in Baghdad in the chain of command for the US intelligence division.

He was later replaced by James.

Numerous Iraqi inmates, often hooded, were photographed in naked pyramids or cowering before unmuzzled army dogs, and in one instance soldiers were pictured posing beside an inmate who died in a shower block inside the jail, in photos leaked to the media earlier this year.

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