US transfers control of notorious Abu Ghraib prison

BAGHDAD, Saturday (AFP)

The US military has transferred control of the notorious Abu Ghraib prison to Iraqi authorities and the “prison is now empty of any detainees or prisoners”, a government spokesman told reporters Saturday.

“The Abu Ghraib prison has been officially handed over yesterday (Friday) by the coalition forces to the Iraqi forces and the prison is currently under the Iraqi administration,” Ali al-Dabaqh said.

“The prison witnessed violations of human rights during the former regime and also under the US forces,” he said, adding Iraqi authorities will decide on what needs to be done with the facility in the future.

Abu Ghraib, on the western outskirts of Baghdad, already dreaded under Saddam Hussein’s regime, gained further notoriety when it was revealed that US forces had abused Iraqi detainees there in 2003.

Earlier this year, the US military had said that it did not anticipate Iraqi authorities using the facility as a prison.

Nearly 4,500 prisoners were held in Abu Ghraib at the start of this year. More than 2,000 of those were later released under Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s national reconciliation plan announced in June.

The rest of the detainees have been transferred to a new facility by the US military.

Abu Ghraib gained notoriety in 2003 when pictures of abuse at the prison, including some showing bloodied and naked prisoners smeared with excrement or forced to perform sexual acts, stoked anti-US sentiment across the world.
A number of lower-ranking US soldiers, described by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as “a few bad apples”, faced courts martial over the abuse.

Specialist Charles Graner and his girlfriend of the time, Private Lynndie England, became the public face of the abuse scandal.
Graner was said to have been the ringleader of the humiliating mistreatment and was jailed for 10 years. England who was pictured holding a naked prisoner at the end of a dog leash, was sentenced to three years in jail and given a dishonorable discharge.

The prison commander at the time, Janis Karpinski, was the most senior officer to be reprimanded. She was demoted from brigadier general to colonel but faced no charges.

Karpinski published a book in 2005, “One Woman’s Army”, in which she said the abuses were perpetrated by contract employees trained in Afghanistan and at the Guantanamo detention camp in Cuba and that her demotion was political retribution by the Pentagon.