U.S. Hands Prison Back to Iraqis

The U.S. military officially handed over the notorious Abu Ghraib prison to the Iraqi Justice Ministry on Saturday, having moved the final 3,000 inmates to detention facilities at Camp Cropper in Baghdad and Camp Bucca in southern Iraq last month.

The transfer took place on a day that 45 deaths were reported, including 14 Indian and Pakistani pilgrims on their way to the holy Shiite cities of Karbala and Najaf.

The prison is a symbol of both the brutality of Saddam Hussein’s regime and, after photographs of prisoner abuse at the hands of U.S. soldiers came to light in April 2004 and February 2006, the ethical perils of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

The emergence of the Abu Ghraib photos, showing naked Iraqi prisoners being humiliated by smiling soldiers and barking dogs, are widely believed to be one of the most damaging blows to American prestige since the conflict began 3 1/2 years ago.

To date, 11 mostly low-ranking soldiers who worked at the prison have been convicted of crimes, including indecent acts, conspiracy and mistreatment of prisoners.

As a result of the Abu Ghraib scandal, Army Reserve Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who ran the prison at the time, was demoted to colonel, and Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez was passed over for an appointment to a four-star command.

Abu Ghraib became a lightning rod for critics around the world and an inspiration for the rising insurgency in Iraq. In 2004, insurgents released a video showing the beheading of American contractor Nick Berg in response to mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. In 2005, insurgents staged an unsuccessful prison break with a 200-man attack on the prison that utilized a barrage of mortar rounds and three suicide vehicle bombs.

In a brief announcement Saturday, Iraqi government spokesman Ali Dabbagh said the prison was empty of prisoners, most of them freed in recent months by Prime Minister Nouri Maliki as a gesture of reconciliation to Sunni Arabs. Iraqi human rights activist Sheik Omar Jibouri and other Iraqi leaders have called for the prison to be converted into a museum devoted to the memory of those who suffered and died there.

More than 13,000 prisoners are still in U.S. custody in Iraq. Many have been held for months without formal charges or access to Iraqi courts.

The Iraqi government holds at least 15,000 more detainees, often in deplorable conditions. In an article published this year, The Times cited internal investigative documents describing beatings, rapes and killings of detainees by prison guards.

Maliki visited Iraq’s most revered and influential religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Saturday in Najaf to discuss a Shiite militia uprising last week that left 90 dead. Militiamen killed 25 Iraqi army soldiers in the battle, which ended only after a U.S. F-16 dropped a 500-pound bomb on fighters’ positions.

The two leaders discussed the thorny issue of controlling Shiite militias, a security sweep underway in Baghdad by U.S. and Iraqi troops and the need to provide the Iraqi people with public resources such as electricity and fuel, Sistani’s representatives said. They said Sistani expressed concern about government corruption and inequities in income, but praised Maliki’s attempts to bring more Sunni Arab militants into the political process.

In the northern Kurdistan area, regional President Massoud Barzani issued an order banning the Iraqi national flag at all regional offices and checkpoints.

“Under this flag thousands of our people were killed, tortured and displaced,” said Khalil Ibrahim, a Kurdistan regional parliament member.

Barzani’s move drew a rebuke from the Muslim Scholars Assn., a prominent group of Sunni Arab clerics, who called it “an unjustified action.”

Among the deaths reported Saturday across Iraq, the Indian and Pakistani pilgrims were killed on their way to worship at the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala. Forensic examiner Saad Abdalamir said the group had attempted to trek from Syria through Al Anbar province, the heart of the Sunni Arab insurgency. “All of them were tortured, killed and mutilated,” he said.

Morgue workers at Yarmouk Hospital in Baghdad said they had received 16 bodies, including those of four relatives who were shot in the southwest neighborhood of Jihad and three people who had been handcuffed and shot in the head.

In south Baghdad, a car bomb exploded between a police station and gas line, killing four people.

Gunmen killed two people in the Yarmouk neighborhood in southwest Baghdad, and a mortar round killed one person in southeast Baghdad.

In Baqubah, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, gunmen killed six people, including three traffic policemen.

In the southern port city of Basra, police found the bodies of two women in an industrial area, and British military officials said that unknown attackers fired 10 missiles at their base at the Shat al Arab hotel. The missile barrage caused no troop casualties, British officials said.

solomon.moore@latimes.com

Times staff writers Saif Rasheed and Raheem Salman in Baghdad and special correspondents in Baghdad, Najaf, Irbil, Baqubah, Amarah and Basra contributed to this report.