BAGHDAD — Faced with a ballooning prison population, U.S. commanders in Iraq are building new detention facilities at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison and Camp Bucca near the Kuwaiti border and are developing a third major prison, in northern Iraq.
The burgeoning number of detainees has also resulted in a lengthy delay in plans for the U.S. to transfer full control of Abu Ghraib to the Iraqi government.
Maj. Gen. William Brandenburg, who oversees U.S.-run prisons in Iraq, had planned to be out of Abu Ghraib by early spring. "I believed it until mid-December, but the numbers just weren't going that way," he said. "Business is booming."
The new timeline calls for the U.S. to stop using Abu Ghraib by February, at which point the entire prison would be turned over to the Iraqi Ministry of Justice.
After the scandal over abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers, President Bush had advocated demolishing Abu Ghraib "as a fitting symbol of Iraq's new beginning."
But the Iraqi government has begun using the prison, which was a notorious torture center under Saddam Hussein, to house prisoners convicted under its nascent criminal justice system. The prison, just west of Baghdad, is currently a joint facility, with the U.S. Army and the Iraqi government housing detainees in separate compounds.
Aggressive operations against insurgents over the last six months have brought a flood of prisoners to U.S.-run facilities -- including many believed to be hard-line rebels who have attacked American troops.
The number of prisoners held by the U.S. in Iraq reached record levels this month before falling slightly. As of Saturday, the average prisoner total in June stood at 10,783, up from 7,837 in January and 5,435 in June 2004.
The two main U.S. Army-run prisons, Abu Ghraib and Camp Bucca, are operating near their maximum or "surge" emergency limits. On Saturday, the two prisons together held 10,178 inmates, with 1,630 detainees awaiting processing in different Army divisional and brigade headquarters.
"We're pushing our surge capacity," said Army spokesman Lt. Col. Guy Rudisill in Baghdad.
The Army is expanding both sites and working on the third major prison, near Sulaymaniya, which would house up to 2,000 prisoners; the additions will increase the total U.S. long-term detention capability to more than 16,000 prisoners.
