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The Abu Ghraib prison (Arabic: سجن أبو غريب; also Abu Ghurayb) is in Abu Ghraib, an Iraqi city 32 km (20 mi) west of Baghdad. It became internationally known as a place where Saddam Hussein's government tortured and executed dissidents, and later as the site of Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse scandal where the United States military's torture of Iraqi dissidents was revealed in a series of photographs published in worldwide news media. Under Hussein's Ba'ath government, it was known as Abu Ghraib Prison and had a reputation as a place of torture and some of the worst cases of torture in the modern world. It was sometimes referred to in the Western media as "Saddam's Torture Central". The prison was renamed after United States forces expelled the former Iraqi government, which had called it the Baghdad Central Confinement Facility (BCCF) or Baghdad Central Correctional Facility. In May of 2004, Camp Avalanche, a tent camp on the grounds of Abu Ghraib for security detainees, changed its name to Camp Redemption at the request of a governing council member. The prison complex was built by British contractors in the 1960s, and covered 280 acres (1.15 km²) with a total of 24 guard towers. The size of a small town, the area was divided into five separate walled compounds for different types of prisoners. Each block contained a dining room, prayer room, exercise area and rudimentary washing facilities. Cells contained up to 40 people in a space four metres by four. By the fall of the government in 2003 the five compounds were designated for foreign prisoners, long sentences, short sentences, capital crimes and "special" crimes.
Under Saddam Hussein See Human rights in Saddam's Iraq for a discussion of the context of these events. Under the government of Saddam Hussein the facility was under the control of the Directorate of General Security (Al-Amn al-Amm) and was the site of the torture and execution of thousands of political prisoners—up to 4.000 prisoners are thought to have been executed there in 1984 alone. During the 1990s human rights organization Amnesty International documented repeated events where as many as several hundred inmates were executed in a single episode. These included hundreds executed in November 1996, and several hundred members of the Shi'a denomination killed in 1998 and 2001. Amnesty reported that it could not produce a complete picture of events at the prison due to government secrecy. It was also the reputed location of Saddam Hussein's alleged woodchipper. The section for political inmates of Abu Ghraib was divided into "open" and "closed" wings. The closed wing housed only Shi'ites. They were not allowed visitors or any outside contact. Coalition prisoners were held and tortured in Abu Ghraib during the Gulf War, including the British Special Air Service patrol Bravo Two Zero. In 2001 the prison is thought to have held as many as 15,000 inmates. Hundreds of Shi'a Kurds and Iraqi citizens of Iranian ethnicity had reportedly been held there incommunicado and without charges since the beginning of the Iran-Iraq War. Guards fed shredded plastic to prisoners. There are allegations that some of these detainees were subjected to experiments as part of Iraq's chemical and biological weapons program. The prison was abandoned prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. An expansion project began in early 2002 that would add six new blocks to the prison.• In October 2002, Saddam Hussein gave amnesty to most prisoners in Iraq. After the prisoners were released, the prison was left empty to be vandalized and looted. Almost all of the documents relating to prisoners were piled and burnt inside of prison offices and cells, leading to extensive structural damage. Known mass-graves related to Abu Ghraib In the area of Khan Dhari, west of Baghdad Mass grave with the bodies of political prisoners from Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. 15 victims were executed on 26 December, 1998 and buried by prison authorities under the cover of darkness. Al-Zahedi, on the western outskirts of Baghdad Secret graves near a civilian cemetery with the bodies of almost 1000 political prisoners. According to an eye witness, ten to 15 bodies arrived at a time from the Abu Ghraib prison and were buried by local civilians. An execution on 10 December 1999 in Abu Ghrain claimed the lives of 101 people at one day. On 9 March, 2000, 58 prisoners were killed at a time. The last corpse interred was number 993. Under the US-led coalition
Transfer to Iraqi control On March 9, 2006, the U.S. military decided to close Abu Ghraib prison and transfer prisoners to other jails in Iraq.•The prison was reported emptied of prisoners in August 2006. On September 2, 2006, Abu Ghraib was formally handed over to Iraq's government. Ali al-Dabbagh, a spokesman for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, stated "The Abu Ghraib detention facility was handed over to the Iraqi government." The formal transfer was conducted between Major General Jack Gardner, Commander of Task Force 134, and representatives of the Iraqi Ministry of Justice and the Iraqi army.• Detainees | ||||||||||
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