The US military says it will begin moving thousands of prisoners out of Abu Ghraib prison to a new jail near Baghdad’s airport within three months and hand the notorious facility over to Iraqi authorities as soon as possible.

THE US will close Abu Ghraib prison, probably within three months, and transfer some 4,500 prisoners to other jails in Iraq, a military spokesman said yesterday.

The American military said today that its new lockup near Baghdad airport to house security prisoners now held at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison should be ready within three months.

The US military today said it would release five female Iraqi detainees, a move demanded by the kidnappers of an American reporter to spare her life.

The US military said it planned to expand its prisons across Iraq to hold as many as 16,000 detainees, as the relentless insurgency showed no sign of relenting one year after the transfer of sovereignty to Iraqi authorities.

THE Iraqi justice minister yesterday accused the US of delaying the interrogation of Saddam Hussein.

Saddam Hussein watched the election of Iraq’s new president on video and was shaken by what he saw, the country’s human-rights minister said.

Saddam Hussein wrote a new message to his family and conversed at length with a visiting team from the international Red Cross last week.