Saturday, January 24, 2009
A rose by any other name...
would smell as sweet. This romantic sentiment of The Immortal Bard would hardly apply to a prison and notorious torture center, but that won't stop the Iraqis from trying.
Iraq will reopen the notorious Abu Ghraib prison next month, but it's getting a facelift and a new name, a senior justice official said Saturday.Why waste a perfectly good facility when all you need do is change a few signs and Poofto! all the bad memories disappear. And the expansion is coming just in time, too.
The heavily fortified compound of gray, stonewalled buildings and watchtowers has come to symbolize American abuse of some prisoners captured in Iraq after photos were released showing U.S. soldiers sexually humiliating inmates at the facility.
The renovated facility will be called Baghdad's Central Prison because the name Abu Ghraib has left a "bitter feeling inside Iraqis' hearts," deputy Justice Minister Busho Ibrahim said.
Abu Ghraib, which was a torture center under Saddam Hussein, has been closed since 2006.
The prison will house 3,500 inmates when it reopens in mid-February and will have a capacity for about 15,000 by the end of this year, Ibrahim told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.
The announcement comes as the U.S. military has begun handing over about 15,000 detainees in its custody to the Iraqis under a new security agreement, prompting concern about Iraq's beleaguered judicial system.Such good timing.
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