U.S. to Hand Over Abu Ghraib to Iraq

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U.S. to Hand Over Abu Ghraib to Iraq

By SINAN SALAHEDDIN,
Associated Press Writer
41 minutes ago



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.

The Iraqi Cabinet announced Thursday that it hanged 13
insurgents, the first executions of militants since
the ouster of Saddam.

The announcement listed the name of only one of those
hanged, Shukair Farid, a former policeman in the
northern city of Mosul, who allegedly confessed that
he had worked with Syrian foreign fighters to enlist
fellow Iraqis to kill police and civilians.

"The competent authorities have today carried out the
death sentences of 13 terrorists," the Cabinet
announcement said.

Farid had "confessed that foreigners recruited him to
spread the fear through killings and abductions," the
government said.

A judicial official said the death sentences were
handed down in separate trials and were carried out in
Baghdad.

"The 13 terrorists were tried in different courts and
their trials began in 2005 and ended earlier this
year," an official of the Supreme Judiciary Council
said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he
feared reprisal from insurgents.

In September, Iraq hanged three convicted murderers,
the first executions of any convicts since Saddam's
ouster in April 2003. The men, considered common
criminals rather than insurgents, were convicted of
killing three police officers, kidnapping and rape.

Capital punishment was suspended during the formal
U.S. occupation, which ended in June 2004, and the
Iraqis reinstated the penalty two months later for
those found guilty of murder, endangering national
security and distributing drugs, saying it was
necessary to help put down the persistent insurgency.

The authorities also wanted to have the option of
executing Saddam if he is convicted of crimes
committed by his regime. Under the former dictator,
114 offenses were punishable by death.

Saddam and seven co-defendants are on trial for
allegedly massacring more than 140 people in Dujail,
north of Baghdad, after an assassination attempt
against him there in 1982.

Death sentences must be approved by the three-member
presidential council headed by President Jalal
Talabani, who opposes executions. In the September
hangings and again in the Thursday executions,
Talabani refused to sign the authorization himself but
gave his two vice presidents the authority.

Also Thursday, a series of explosions rocked Baghdad,
including a car bomb that struck a Sunni mosque and a
shooting that killed a total of 17 civilians and
wounded 31 as a dust storm enveloped the capital.

One of the deadly blasts targeted an Iraqi army patrol
in the mostly Sunni western neighborhood of Amariyah,
killing nine civilians and wounding six, according to
an Interior Ministry official, Major Falah
al-Mohammedawi.

A car bomb also exploded near the Sunni Al-Israa
Walmiraj mosque in east Baghdad, killing five
civilians and wounding 12 others, police Capt. Mahir
Hamad Mousa said.

Police reported finding five more blindfolded,
handcuffed bodies killed execution-style, three of
them near Fallujah, west of Baghdad , and two others
in the Sadr City Shiite slum in the east of the
capital.

The U.S. military reported the death of another
Marine, killed Wednesday in insurgency-ridden Anbar
province. At least 2,305 U.S. service members have
died since the war started in March 2003, according to
an Associated Press count.

Meanwhile, an Iraqi Justice Ministry official said the
U.S. military had released two senior members of
Saddam's former regime, including a deputy prime
minister, after finding they were not involved in
crimes against humanity.

Abdel Tawab Mullah Huweish, a former deputy prime
minister and minister of military industrialization,
and Saeed Abdul-Majid al-Faisal, former Foreign
Ministry undersecretary, were released Feb. 23, said
Justice Ministry official Busho Ibrahim Ali.

Huweish, who had been in custody since May 2, 2003,
was one of the 55 most-wanted members of Saddam's
regime.

"They were freed because there is no proof that they
committed crimes against humanity," Ali said.

In political developments, Shiite politicians said
they asked President Talabani, a Kurd, to convene
parliament March 19, one week past the constitutional
deadline, marking an apparent compromise in the battle
over a second term for Prime Minister Ibrahim
al-Jaafari, a Shiite.

Shiite legislators Khaled al-Attiyah and Khudayer
al-Khuzai told The Associated Press that the request
for parliament to convene had been delivered to
Talabani. On Sunday, the president sought to issue a
decree that would have called the parliament into
session on March 12, as spelled out in the
constitution.

But the move was blocked when one of two vice
presidents — a Shiite — initially refused to co-sign
the decree as required by law. Vice President Adil
Abdul-Mahdi relented Wednesday, but the issue still
faced heated opposition from other Shiite political
forces, especially in the powerful bloc loyal to
radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.