US to expand Iraq prisons to 16,000

With Camp Bucca and Abu Ghraib at "surge capacity" for months now, and no signs that the insurgency is about to let up, the US announced plans to open a new facility by September, and to expand capacity. Since last autumn, the prison population has more than doubled. Only about 400 of the current 10,002 detainees are foreign nationals. The rest are Iraqi. According to the AP:

The burgeoning prison population has forced the U.S. military to begin renovations on existing facilities, and work has also begun on restoring an old Iraqi military barracks near Sulaimaniyah, 160 miles northeast of Baghdad.

The facility, to be called Fort Suse, is expected to be completed by Sept. 30 and will have room for 2,000 new detainees, Rudisill said.

All renovations should be done by February and are expected to make room for 16,000 detainees in Iraq, he said.

Two weeks ago, the military completed a new 400-detainee compound at Abu Ghraib, which the U.S. government sought to tear down after it became a symbol of an abuse scandal. It was kept in service after the Iraqi government objected. A new compound of the same size should be finished by the end of July at Abu Ghraib, Rudisill said.

The spokesman attributed the rise in the number of prisoners to "successful ongoing military operations against the insurgency and terrorists."