Abu Ghraib to reopen as prison
BAGHDAD — Iraq will reopen the notorious Abu Ghraib prison next month — after a face-lift and a new name, a senior justice official said Saturday.
The heavily fortified compound of gray, stonewalled buildings and watchtowers has come to symbolize American abuse of some prisoners captured in Iraq after photos were released showing U. S. soldiers sexually humiliating inmates in the facility.
The scandal stoked support for the insurgency and was one of the biggest setbacks to the U. S. military effort to bring peace to Iraq.
The renovated facility will be called Baghdad’s Central Prison because the name Abu Ghraib has left a “bitter feeling inside Iraqis’ hearts,” Deputy Justice Minister Busho Ibrahim said.
Abu Ghraib, which was a torture center under Saddam Hussein, has been closed since 2006.
The prison will house 3,500 inmates when it reopens in mid-February and will have a capacity for about 15,000 by the end of this year, Ibrahim told the Associated Press in a telephone interview.
The announcement was made as the U. S. military began handing over about 15,000 detainees in its custody to the Iraqis under a new security agreement, prompting concern about Iraq’s beleaguered judicial system. The United Nations warned in a recent human rights report about overcrowding and “grave human rights violations” of detainees in Iraqi custody.
“We have crowded prisons, and the opening of Baghdad’s Central Prison will help ease the problem,” Ibrahim said.
He said the facility will operate according to international standards.
Last year, the government said it would turn a section of the 280-acre prison into a museum documenting Saddam’s crimes but not the abuses committed by U. S. guards.
The photos from Abu Ghraib left another serious stain on the reputation of the United States after worldwide protests against the March 2003 invasion. They also discredited U. S. claims that it was trying to build a country based on rule of law and respect for human rights on the wreckage of dictatorship.
In all, 11 U. S. soldiers were convicted of breaking military laws, and five others were disciplined.
On Saturday, a suicide car bomber struck an Iraqi police patrol in the former insurgent stronghold of Karmah, west of Baghdad, killing four people, including a senior officer, and injuring six others, according to police and hospital officials.
The U. S. military said two people were killed and four injured.
Two U. S. soldiers also died Saturday of noncombat causes in separate incidents in Iraq, the military said.
The deaths raised to at least 4,232, members of the U. S. military who have died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
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