(Recasts with witnesses)

By Paul Tait

CAMP VICTORY, Iraq, April 30 (Reuters) - A former U.S. detention facility commander in Iraq who is accused of aiding the enemy gave a box of computer programmes to a detainee's daughter, a military investigation heard on Monday.

The investigation is being held to determine whether Lieutenant-Colonel William Steele, former commander of the 451st Military Police Detachment and in charge of detention facilities at Camp Cropper, should face a court-martial.

Insurgents and former senior aides to Saddam Hussein are held at the camp, near Baghdad international airport.

Steele is accused of fraternising with a detainee's daughter, having an improper relationship with a translator, providing unmonitored mobile phones to prisoners, unauthorised possession of classified information and keeping pornographic videos.

Steele, thin and wearing wire-rimmed spectacles, only spoke to answer whether he understood the nature of the investigation at a U.S. military base near Baghdad's airport.

Lieutenant-Colonel Quinten Crank, whose unit took over from Steele's on Oct. 5., said Steele later returned during a family visitation day after phoning to say he had "college material" for a detainee's daughter.

He said he saw Steele having a conversation with the daughter of "a high-value detainee".

"He gave her a box containing some computer programmes and computer sheets," Crank told the investigation.

Asked by prosecutors if he found that odd, Crank said: "Personally, yes".

"It was done in the open but in a separate room away from everyone else," Crank said.

He said in response to defence questions that the programmes appeared to be about architecture or engineering.

Steele, charged under the Uniformed Code of Military Justice, had been in detention in Kuwait since last month before returning to Baghdad.

The offences are alleged to have occurred between October 2005 and February 2007. The U.S. military has said the charges are only an accusation of wrongdoing and that Steele is entitled to the presumption of innocence.

While the charge of aiding the enemy can result in a death penalty, a U.S. military legal spokesman said life imprisonment would likely be the maximum penalty Steele faced.

Steele is the highest-ranking U.S. officer to face a charge of aiding the enemy since Captain James Yee, a Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo Bay, was charged in September 2003 with mutiny, sedition, aiding the enemy, adultery and possession of pornography. The army eventually dropped his case.

PORNOGRAPHIC MOVIES

Crank earlier said he had seen Steele download "in excess of 20 CDs" off a secure government computer during a handover period when the pair shared the same office.

Earlier, Special Agent Patrick Rasmussen, a forensic computer investigator, told the hearing that an examination of the hard drive of an IBM laptop had found 37 adult pornographic movies and 122 pornographic images.

"The suspect's email appeared to be of an adulterous nature," Rasmussen said, although it was not established if the laptops were used by Steele.

Defence counsel Major David Barrett earlier asked for a delay to the investigation because his team did not yet have the proper clearance to view potentially top secret information.

"This is a potential capital case," Barrett said.

The Article 32 hearing is expected to last for at least another two days.

Camp Cropper, which holds more than 3,000 detainees, is where Saddam spent his final days before his Dec. 30 execution.

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