Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison getting makeover

Bushra Juhi, Associated Press
Friday, September 5, 2008
(09-05) 04:00 PDT Baghdad —

Hosted by Tyra Banks

The notorious Abu Ghraib prison is getting a face-lift: work to reopen the facility and construct a museum documenting Saddam Hussein’s crimes – but not the abuses committed there by U.S. guards.

The sprawling complex, which has not held prisoners since 2006, will be refurbished with the goal of taking new inmates in about a year, the government said Thursday.

Also, a section of the 280-acre site just west of Baghdad will be converted into the museum featuring execution chamber exhibits and other displays of torture tools used by Hussein’s regime – including an iron chain used to tie prisoners together.

But Iraq’s predominantly Shiite government has no plans to document the U.S. military abuse scandal that erupted in 2004 with the publication of photographs that shocked the world: grinning U.S. soldiers mistreating Iraqi prisoners, some naked, being held on leashes or in painful and sexually humiliating positions.

Iraq’s deputy justice minister [and Bush Administration lackey], Busho Ibrahim, said American brutality was “nothing” compared to the violence and atrocities of Hussein and his Sunni-dominated Baath Party.

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