http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0310iraq-abughraib0310.html

.S. to walk away from Abu Ghraib

Robert F. Worth New York Times Mar. 10, 2006 12:00 AM

BAGHDAD - The American military said Thursday that within the next several months it plans to relocate all its detainees from Abu Ghraib prison, the sprawling penal compound west of Baghdad that became notorious throughout the world after photographs were made public of American soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners there.

The prison will then be turned over to the Iraqi government, American military officials said.

Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, talked about the plan to leave Abu Ghraib at a Senate hearing in Washington.

But Pace and military officials in Baghdad said the exact timing of the move was unclear.

"We do have plans to and are in the process of building other facilities to move the detainees who are under U.S. control out of Abu Ghraib," Pace said.

The general said "it should be several more months" before the new American-run detention center is finished. "Then it'll be up to the Iraqi government as to what they want to do" with Abu Ghraib, he said.

The transfer also will remove the American military from the site of one of the most damaging scandals it has faced.

The images of Iraqi detainees being beaten and sexually humiliated at the prison became a touchstone for Arab and Muslim rage against the United States in the spring of 2004 and a potent recruiting tool for insurgents in Iraq and elsewhere.

The prison complex was also a widely feared center for torture and execution under Saddam Hussein.

After the fall of Saddam to an American-led invasion in 2003, there were calls for Abu Ghraib to be demolished.