The US military has announced plans to close the notorious US-run Abu Ghraib prison and move inmates to other jails in Iraq.
The prison, located in western Baghdad, was a torture centre under Saddam Hussein before photographs of American soldiers abusing Iraqi detainees there in 2003 gave it a new notoriety and attracted international condemnation.
The prison may be closed within three months, and some 4,500 prisoners will be distributed to other jails in Iraq, according to a US military spokesman.
An Australian television station broadcast previously unpublished images last month of apparent abuse of prisoners at the prison.
The images were recorded at the same time as the now infamous pictures of US soldiers abusing Abu Ghraib detainees which sparked international outrage in 2004. Some of the pictures suggest further abuse such as killing, torture and sexual humiliation.
"We will transfer operations from Abu Ghraib to the new Camp Cropper once construction is completed there," Lieutenant Colonel Keir-Kevin Curry told journalists.
"No precise dates have been set, but the plan is to accomplish this within the next two to three months," said Curry, the spokesman for US detention operations in Iraq.
Camp Cropper is a detention facility in the US military headquarters base at Baghdad airport, not far from Abu Ghraib .
It currently houses only 127 so-called "high-value" detainees, among them Saddam himself. US military officials claim a purpose-built prison at Camp Cropper will provide better conditions for Iraqis detained on suspicion of insurgent activity.
The buildings at Abu Ghraib , including the original brick- built jail and surrounding tented camp that has sprung up under US control, will be handed over to the Iraqi government.
At present, US forces are holding 14,589 people in four jails in Iraq. More than half are at Camp Bucca, in the south.
The conviction of several low-ranking US soldiers for abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 - secured after photographs taken by the soldiers emerged in public - failed to quiet anger at the treatment of detainees.
Thousands of people are held on suspicion of guerrilla activity for many months. The United Nations and Iraqi ministers have complained that the system is an abuse of human rights.