Global Policy Forum

By Michael Howard

American forces have agreed to hand over control of the infamous Abu Ghraib prison to the newly elected Iraqi authorities in an attempt to draw a line under one of the most shameful episodes of the Iraq war. Iraq's human rights minister, Bakhtiar Amin, yesterday told the Guardian that the US had agreed to the pullout at the four main detention facilities, including Abu Ghraib, west of Baghdad, the prison at the centre of the abuse and torture scandal. Two other locations in the centre of Iraq and a British-run prison in the south will also be handed over to Iraqi control, although no deadline has been set, Mr Amin said.

He said he had requested the transfer of authority of the country's prisons from Major General William Brandenburg, the US commander of detention facilities in Iraq. "We have discussed and asked that the detention centres be transferred to the Iraqis. They agreed to that," the human rights minister said. "It is an important sign of Iraq's new sovereignty that the new authorities take charge of its detainees and its detention facilities."

The prison was at the centre of a political storm after revelations of mistreatment and torture of Iraqi inmates by their US guards. The scandal was exposed last April with the publication of photographs and video film showing US soldiers abusing naked Iraqis and forcing them to perform sex acts. The furore damaged the reputation of the US army and paved the way for the disclosure of other abuses of Iraqi detainees by foreign troops in Iraq, including by British soldiers in the largely Shia south.

Mr Amin, whose ministry monitors conditions in Iraq's US-run penal facilities, said the transfer will begin after the formation of the new Iraqi government, which is due to happen in the next few weeks. The transfer would take place gradually and sensibly: "Iraq still needs time and international assistance and training to prepare and control and run and manage these prisons in a fit and proper way."

US military officials in Baghdad could not be reached for comment yesterday. But on Tuesday an army official said US forces were considering pulling out of Abu Ghraib be cause of a spate of attacks on the facility by insurgents. Last April, a barrage of 28 mortar rounds killed 22 prisoners and injured 91. The army official said the US would probably transfer only high security detainees in Abu Ghraib to another facility at the US base at Baghdad's airport, while the majority of the "common criminals" would remain under Iraqi control.

The US-run prison system in Iraq is currently bloated with detainees. More than 10,000 are estimated to be behind bars - the highest number since the insurgency began in 2003. Their ranks have swollen during the crackdowns by US and Iraqi security forces before and after the January 30 elections. However the rounding up of large numbers of suspects appears to be having little effect on the operational effectiveness of the insurgents. In further grim news yesterday, Iraqi officials said that 35 bodies, some shot execution-style, others beheaded, had been discovered at two sites, one just south of the capital and the other near the western border with Syria.

There are three main US detention centres in Iraq: Abu Ghraib, on the western outskirts of the capital, which holds about 3,160 detainees; Camp Bucca near the southern city of Umm Qasr, which has at least 5,640; and Camp Cropper at the Baghdad international airport complex, where Saddam Hussein and the leaders of the former Ba'athist regime are being held pending trial.

A fourth detention centre is run by British forces at Shaibah near the southern city of Basra, where 818 people are being held. Mr Amin said he understood this would also be included in the handover. "After the era of the Saddam regime, where an Iraqi prison was a byword for torture and murder, and the shock of the prisoner abuse by US military guards, a smooth handover would go a long way to restoring the credibility of the country's justice and penal system."

Mr Amin said conditions at the detention centres had improved enormously since the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, and admitted there were no guarantees that Iraq's burgeoning prison population would fare any better under Iraqi jurisdiction.

A state department report last week said that human rights abuses were occurring under the interim Iraqi government, including torture, illegal detention by police and forced confessions, though it accepted that "a long legacy of serious human rights abuses" under Saddam had been reversed. "We cannot expect the system to become like Denmark's or Sweden's overnight," Mr Amin conceded. "Saddam created many mini-Saddams." He said it was crucial that guarantees of human rights in the justice system be included in the permanent constitution that will be drafted by the new parliament.