US may be forced out of Abu Ghraib

Attacks against Baghdad’s notorious Abu Ghraib prison may force the US military to return the facility to Iraq’s government and take their own high-security prisoners to a safer place, a US military official said.

As the US mulls over a plan to pull out of the notorious facility, located on the outskirts of the Iraqi capital, US military figures show a crackdown against insurgents before and after January 30’s landmark parliamentary elections has bloated Iraq’s prison system to the breaking point.

“The reason we would like to move our operations from Abu Ghraib is that it has been regularly targeted with attacks from insurgents. The new facility would be within the larger Baghdad International Airport complex, making it less susceptible to attacks,” Lt Col Barry Johnson, a spokesman for Iraq Detention Operations, said.

Abu Ghraib became infamous because of an abuse scandal that unfolded there after the publication last April of photographs showing naked, terrified Iraqi prisoners being mistreated and humiliated by US military guards.

Plans for moving the prison, however, are not yet final, Johnson said.

Abu Ghraib is a 280-acre facility, a jumble of top-security buildings and minimum risk tent cities, located along a dusty highway west of the city.

The facility has come under repeated attack from insurgents. In April, a barrage of 28 mortars rounds killed 22 prisoners and injured 91. There were no US deaths in that attack.

At 3,200 inmates, Abu Ghraib has already surpassed the 2,500 people it was designed to incarcerate. Camp Bucca has 5,750 detainees, 550 more than its capacity. Camp Cropper, which holds 110 high-profile detainees, including former dictator Saddam Hussein, is the only prison that is not yet overpopulated.

In the run-up to the Iraqi elections, many suspects were rounded up in a bid to secure the polls, and the figures showed that more than 1,473 were captured in the two weeks before the January 30 vote.

The numbers have not dropped after the elections – last month, 1,927 suspects were captured, 1,049 of whom were processed to detention facilities.

There have been at least three major outbreaks of violence at Abu Ghraib and Camp Bucca, the most recent on January 31 when US guards fired on prisoners during a riot at Camp Bucca, killing four detainees and injuring six others.