U.S. moving prisoners, giving up Abu Ghraib

The Iraqi Cabinet hanged 13 insurgents Thursday.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- The U.S. military said Thursday it would begin moving thousands of prisoners out of Abu Ghraib prison to a new lockup near Baghdad's airport within three months and hand the notorious facility over to Iraqi authorities as soon as possible.
Abu Ghraib has become perhaps the most infamous prison in the world, known as the site where U.S. soldiers abused some Iraqi detainees and, earlier, for its torture chambers during Saddam Hussein's rule.
The sprawling facility on the western outskirts of Baghdad will be turned over to Iraqi authorities once the prisoner transfer to Camp Cropper and other U.S. military prisons in the country is finished. The process will take several months, said Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad.
Abu Ghraib currently houses 4,537 out of the 14,589 detainees held by the U.S. military in the country. Iraqi authorities also hold prisoners at Abu Ghraib, though it is not known how many.
Debate over prison
The U.S. government initially spoke of tearing down Abu Ghraib after it became a symbol of the scandal. Widely publicized photographs of prisoner abuse by American military guards and interrogators led to intense global criticism of the U.S. war in Iraq and helped fuel the Sunni Arab insurgency.
But Abu Ghraib was kept in service after the Iraqi government objected. Planning for the new facility at Camp Cropper began in 2004, Johnson said.
Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the U.S. wants to turn Abu Ghraib over to the Iraqis as fast as possible.
"There are facilities being built so that the U.S. can pull out of Abu Ghraib. Then it will be up to the Iraqi government to decide what they want to do. I do not know that the Iraqi government had decided. It's an Iraqi decision, I just don't know that they've made that decision."
13 insurgents hanged
The Iraqi Cabinet announced Thursday that it hanged 13 insurgents, the first executions of militants since the ouster of Saddam.
In September, Iraq hanged three convicted murderers, the first executions of any convicts since Saddam's ouster in April 2003.
Capital punishment was suspended during the formal U.S. occupation, which ended in June 2004, and the Iraqis reinstated the penalty two months later for those found guilty of murder, endangering national security and distributing drugs, saying it was necessary to help put down the persistent insurgency.
The authorities also wanted to have the option of executing Saddam if he is convicted of crimes committed by his regime.
Explosions
Also Thursday, a series of explosions rocked Baghdad, including a car bomb that struck a Sunni mosque and a shooting that killed a total of 17 civilians and wounded 31 as a dust storm enveloped the capital.
One of the deadly blasts targeted an Iraqi army patrol in the mostly Sunni western neighborhood of Amariyah, killing nine civilians and wounding six, according to an Interior Ministry official, Major Falah al-Mohammedawi.
A car bomb also exploded near the Sunni Al-Israa Walmiraj mosque in east Baghdad, killing five civilians and wounding 12 others, police Capt. Mahir Hamad Mousa said.
Police reported finding five more blindfolded, handcuffed bodies killed execution-style, three of them near Fallujah, west of Baghdad, and two others in the Sadr City Shiite slum in the east of the capital.
The U.S. military reported the death of another Marine, killed Wednesday in insurgency-ridden Anbar province.
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