BAGHDAD - IRAQ said on Wednesday it plans to rebuild the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, complete with a museum to portray crimes committed by the regime of executed dictator Saddam Hussein.

The prison, located 25 kilometres west of Baghdad, was closed in September 2006 after the US military handed it over to the Iraqi authorities in the wake of a scandal over abuse of inmates.

'A part of it will be kept as a museum for showing the crimes committed by the previous regime,' government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said.

A committee of interior, defence and justice ministries will oversee the reconstruction, he said, without giving a timetable for completion.

The Abu Ghraib prison scandal erupted in early 2004, with photos surfacing in the media of naked and hooded Iraqi prisoners beaten bloody and being made to commit humiliating acts such as simulating homosexual sex.

Photographs also showed US soldiers posing proudly with battered corpses and nude injured prisoners.

Since then the US military has opened other two military prisons in Iraq, Camp Cropper and Camp Bucca, to the international as well as regional Arab media.

Abu Ghraib housed about 2,000 inmates when it closed in 2006. Currently US prisons hold more than 20,000 detainees. -- AFP