“The prison is officially open and we have received inmates. Hundreds are present”... This was the statement given by the director general of the reopened Abu Ghraib Prison, Alsharif Al Murtadha Abdul Al Mutalib.

Abu Ghraib, the old prison was closed after the exposure of pictures of American jail-keepers while torturing and sexually assaulting inmates.

The new prison was given a different name: Baghdad Central Prison, and will contain different facilities which are meant to make life much easier for the prisoners. According to Jordan times newspaper dated February 23rd, 2009: The prison will contain medical facilities, a Mosque, a computer chat-room, a courtyard for visiting families, as well as a sewing factory for the prisoners to sew their clothes; All of which being an attempt to erase the memory of Abu Ghraib, and create new memories where inmates are treated like the prisoners of war they are (or at least some of them are).

I am not sure if this plan will work as expected. Some memories cannot be simply forgotten, and some memories should not be simply forgotten, as they will be needed when attempting to analyze any further “criminal incidences” that happen in either Iraq or America.

It is important to remember that “matter does not disappear, it only changes form”... And those memories will come out one day, yet in a different form... I however believe that this form won’t be THAT different from the original one that created it.

Ironically, those were members of the same army that claimed to be in Iraq to free Iraqis from Saddam’s grip, and his long years of torture and humiliation.

P.S.: I tried to choose the least disturbing picture of torture in AbuGhraib prison. The above pictures represents a very small part of what happened there. I just wasn’t able to look at the rest.