Abu Ghraib: Day 279
U.S. to Turn Abu Ghraib Over to Iraqis in Three Months
Thursday, March 09, 2006
BAGHDAD, Iraq - The U.S. military said Thursday it would begin moving thousands of prisoners out of Abu Ghraib prison to a new lockup near Baghdad's airport within three months and hand the notorious facility over to Iraqi authorities as soon as possible.
Abu Ghraib has become perhaps the most infamous prison in the world, known as the site where U.S. soldiers abused some Iraqi detainees and, earlier, for its torture chambers during Saddam Hussein's rule.
The sprawling facility on the western outskirts of Baghdad will be turned over to Iraqi authorities once the prisoner transfer to Camp Cropper and other U.S. military prisons in the country is finished. The process will take several months, said Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad.
Abu Ghraib currently houses 4,537 out of the 14,589 detainees held by the U.S. military in the country. Iraqi authorities also hold prisoners at Abu Ghraib, though it is not known how many.
The U.S. government initially spoke of tearing down Abu Ghraib after it became a symbol of the scandal. Widely publicized photographs of prisoner abuse by American military guards and interrogators led to intense global criticism of the U.S. war in Iraq and helped fuel the Sunni Arab insurgency.
But Abu Ghraib was kept in service after the Iraqi government objected. Planning for the new facility at Camp Cropper began in 2004, Johnson said.
Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the U.S. wants to turn Abu Ghraib over to the Iraqis fast as possible.
"There are facilities being built so that the U.S. can pull out of Abu Ghraib. Then it will be up to the Iraqi government to decide what they want to do. I do not know that the Iraqi government had decided. It's an Iraqi decision, I just don't know that they've made that decision."
But the Iraqis were all but certain to use Abu Ghraib as a jail for some time at least, because they do not have the money to build new ones.