The Abu Ghraib prison

The Abu Ghraib prison is placed in Abu Ghraib. Abu Ghraib is an Iraqi city 32 km west of Baghdad.

The prison was built in 1960s by British contractors and covers 280 acres which is 1.15 km². The prison is equipped with 24 guard towers. The prison is internationally known as a place where Saddam Hussein’s government tortured and executed dissidents and later as the site of abuse of Iraqi suspects by the US military.

In 2001 Saddam Hussein was still in power and Abu Ghraib may have held as many as 15.000 people. The cells were horribly overcrowded, with up to forty people in a way too small cell. In October 2002 Saddam Hussein is declared a general amnesty and all the prisoners were released.

Soon after the American invasion of Iraq, the building was restored by American occupation forces as a detention and holding facility. In May 2004, the United States President George W. Bush told that he planned to demolish the prison. A month later, military judge Col. James Pohl ruled that the prison was a crime scene and that the prison couldn’t be demolished.

From the time were Saddam Hussein’s government ruled the prison there were photographs from inside Abu Ghraib. On these pictures the prisoners were tortured and that was an evidence of the prison’s history.

According to reports from Amnesty International it gives some idea of the brutality that was going on in the Abu Ghraib prison. To mention some of it:

- In January 1994, more than 150 detainees were executed over two days.

- In November 1996, hundreds of opposition group members were executed.

- In June 1998, more than 60 people were executed, mostly detainees from 1991 Shia uprising.

- On 12 October 1999, at least 100 prisoners were executed.

- In October 2001, more than 23 political prisoners, mainly Shia Muslims, were executed.

The mass executions, detainees were subjected to extreme torture – including the use of electric shocks, drills and lighted cigarettes on the body; the extraction of fingernails, beatings, mock executions and threats to rape detainees’ relatives.

- do you want to read and learn more about the American situation, check out this link below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisoner_abuse