US builds bigger prisons for Iraq insurgents
The United States is spending $US50 million to build new prisons to house the thousands of suspected insurgents its forces are capturing in Iraq.
With the insurgency in Iraq continuing to rage, US forces are now holding more than 10,000 "security detainees", full capacity in their three main jails in Iraq - including the scandal-plagued Abu Ghraib - and nearly double the number they held a year ago.
The new construction will give the US capacity to hold up to 16,000 prisoners in Iraq, military spokesman Lieutenant Guy Rudisill said.
A further 1,550 are being held at separate brigade and division-level detention camps.
US forces will build a new jail at a former military barracks in Sulaimaniya, 330 kilometres north of Baghdad, and add room for 2,000 more prisoners at Camp Cropper near Baghdad airport, which now holds just 125 detainees including former President Saddam Hussein.
The biggest US-run prison, Camp Bucca near Umm Qasr in the south, will also be expanded to hold an additional 1,400.
Abu Ghraib - Saddam's most notorious prison which also became the focus of a scandal for US troops after pictures emerged showing them sexually abusing detainees there - has just been expanded to house 400 more detainees and will get room for another 400.
US officials said after the scandal that they hoped to close Abu Ghraib down.
Lt Rudisill said the plan was to move prisoners from there to Cropper after that camp is expanded.
The US-run camps are for "security detainees" held by Iraqi and US-led international forces as suspected insurgents. Ordinary Iraqi criminals are held in regular Iraqi jails.
Lt Rudisill said the expanding US-run prison camp population in Iraq were a result of "successful military operations against the insurgency and terrorists by coalition forces and the Iraqi special forces".
-Reuters
With the insurgency in Iraq continuing to rage, US forces are now holding more than 10,000 "security detainees", full capacity in their three main jails in Iraq - including the scandal-plagued Abu Ghraib - and nearly double the number they held a year ago.
The new construction will give the US capacity to hold up to 16,000 prisoners in Iraq, military spokesman Lieutenant Guy Rudisill said.
A further 1,550 are being held at separate brigade and division-level detention camps.
US forces will build a new jail at a former military barracks in Sulaimaniya, 330 kilometres north of Baghdad, and add room for 2,000 more prisoners at Camp Cropper near Baghdad airport, which now holds just 125 detainees including former President Saddam Hussein.
The biggest US-run prison, Camp Bucca near Umm Qasr in the south, will also be expanded to hold an additional 1,400.
Abu Ghraib - Saddam's most notorious prison which also became the focus of a scandal for US troops after pictures emerged showing them sexually abusing detainees there - has just been expanded to house 400 more detainees and will get room for another 400.
US officials said after the scandal that they hoped to close Abu Ghraib down.
Lt Rudisill said the plan was to move prisoners from there to Cropper after that camp is expanded.
The US-run camps are for "security detainees" held by Iraqi and US-led international forces as suspected insurgents. Ordinary Iraqi criminals are held in regular Iraqi jails.
Lt Rudisill said the expanding US-run prison camp population in Iraq were a result of "successful military operations against the insurgency and terrorists by coalition forces and the Iraqi special forces".
-Reuters
posted by Kangaroo Brisbane Australia at 10:42 PM
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