Thursday, March 09, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq — 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.

Australian TV Airs Abu Ghraib Images

Wednesday, February 15, 2006

SYDNEY, Australia  — An Australian television network broadcast photographs and video clips Wednesday that it said were previously unpublished images of the abuse of Iraqis held in U.S. military custody at Abu Ghraib prison in 2003.

The images were taken at Abu Ghraib at about the same time as previously published photographs of Iraqi prisoner abuse, the Special Broadcasting Service's "Dateline" program reported.

SBS refused to give details on the source of the photographs, and the authenticity of the images could not be verified independently.

The images shown by SBS were consistent with the earlier photographs of abuse by American soldiers, which triggered outrage in the Middle East and prompted a U.S. congressional investigation and military trials for some soldiers involved.

The network did not identify anyone shown in the images. However, several photos appear to show former Cpl. Charles Graner, Jr., who is serving a 10-year prison term at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., after being convicted of abusing Iraqi captives.

Men wearing combat-style uniforms and holding dogs on leashes appear in at least one image.

Many of the images broadcast Wednesday were more graphic than those previously published, showing what appear to be dead bodies, as well as wounded people and prisoners performing sex acts. SBS said the photographs of the dead bodies were of people who had died at the prison.

The SBS showed photographs of a bloodied cell block and a corpse, and said the man had been killed during a CIA interrogation.

One clip broadcast by SBS showed a group of naked men with bags over their heads standing together, masturbating. The network said the masturbation had been forced.

Another video, shot from several angles, showed a man described as mentally disturbed repeatedly beating his head against a wall.

A photograph showed a man with a deep cut on his neck, and another of the same man surrounded by men dressed in khaki shirts and pants, with one man pointing at the wound.

The Arab satellite station Al-Jazeera broadcast brief excerpts of the Australian footage, including the face of an Iraqi prisoner in agony, a hooded Iraqi male in his underwear, a naked figure lying on the floor next to what appeared to be a pool of blood and another with a man who appeared to be Graner smiling as he held one male prisoner.

The SBS broadcast said many of the new photos showed Graner having sex with Lynndie England, a 22-year-old reservist from Fort Ashby, W. Va., serving a three-year prison term for abusing detainees. England said Graner fathered her young son.

Those photos were not shown.

SBS said the images it showed were among photographs the American Civil Liberties Union was trying to obtain from the U.S. government under a Freedom of Information request.

A U.S. district court in September upheld the request in a ruling covering scores of photographs and several videotapes. Government lawyers said it was considering an appeal, and the images were not immediately released.

In a statement e-mailed to The Associated Press, SBS said the ACLU had not seen the images sought under the Freedom of Information request, so it had not been able to confirm whether they were the same as those broadcast Wednesday.

But the general description of the photographs the ACLU is seeking "is consistent with the photographs we are releasing," the SBS statement said.

"'Dateline' is confident in the credibility of the source of these new photographs and videos," the SBS statement said. "They are entirely consistent with descriptions of the unreleased photographs and videos from various U.S. army reports into the abuses."

At a Senate Armed Services Committee inquiry in May 2004, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld testified that not all known photographs of the abuses at Abu Ghraib had been released publicly.

"Beyond abuse of prisoners, there are other photos that depict incidents of physical violence toward prisoners, acts that can only be described as blatantly sadistic, cruel and inhuman," Rumsfeld said at the time.