The spot where US soldiers forced naked Iraqis to form a human pyramid now smells of fresh paint and disinfectant. The prison wing where hundreds more were executed during Saddam Hussein's regime is silent and empty, but for a few desks and documents that stand testament to his sadism.

There are signs of new beginnings at the reborn Abu Ghraib jail as it prepares to open its doors again to prisoners; there are greenhouses under construction, a rehabilitated sports yard, a barber shop - even beehives. But the ghosts of an infamous past are never far away throughout the whitewashed, 10-acre block on the western outskirts of Baghdad. Five years after Abu Ghraib entered the global lexicon it is, to many Iraqis, still a site of degradation and a forbidding reminder of the American occupation.

This month, Abu Ghraib will receive inmates, many from the two US detention centres in Iraq - Camp Cropper and Camp Bucca - that this year are handing over detainees at rates unparalleled in the six years since the invading US army captured its first detainee. In keeping with the spirit of renewal, the jail is to be renamed Baghdad Central Prison. But Abu Ghraib's new branding does not mean that its inmates, or its reputation, will soon change.

Iraqi authorities yesterday offered the first public glimpse inside Abu Ghraib since it was closed in mid 2006 and was transformed into a parking lot for army trucks. Part of the prison reopened in November, with about 500 inmates now serving time there. Up to 10,000 more will soon follow, including hardcore political prisoners and criminals sentenced to long terms.

Under current plans, many detainees in the US system deemed either hardcore, or irredeemable, will be sent here again, meaning that the prison will have come full circle since the Americans left in disgrace shortly after revelations of humiliation and torture of detainees were made public in the US media.

Shareef al-Raddi, who will act as the inaugural director of the new Abu Ghraib, said the facility would hold about a third of its former numbers. "Already we have 400 and they will soon include Arabs and other foreigners," he said. "Abu Ghraib now is a source of rehabilitation, not like it was before.

"There are halls and places in which death sentences were handed down and executions carried out during the time of Saddam. We have kept them as they are to remind people of the brutality of the previous regime. We left it as it was so people will remember. There is nothing to document the abuse of the Americans. The prison under the old regime represented oppression, humiliation and torture for the Iraqi people. And after 2003, everyone saw what the Americans did here. This is not the same Abu Ghraib."

Raad Sayed, a Baghdad local, spent nearly three months in Abu Ghraib between February and May 2004. He has not told his story before, though his account of abuse is similar to that of others repeated over the past five years, which include evidence of dogs used to terrorise naked men, electrocutions and mock executions.

"I was taken from the Ameriyeh district [in Baghdad] to a police academy," he said. "From there I was put in a car belonging to the Americans. My legs and hands were handcuffed and I was taken to Abu Ghraib. We were handed over."

While not himself claiming to have been badly abused, Sayed says others in his cell were regularly beaten and brutalised. He alleges that two inmates in particular were targeted. "One was called Hamudi and the other Abu Raya. They were both beaten to a point where they couldn't stand or use the toilet themselves. I was forced to stand outside in a tent in my underwear and a female US soldier used to come into our cell asking who wanted to have sex with her.

From Abu Ghraib, Sayed was taken to Camp Bucca, near the Kuwaiti border, considered a centre for suspected hardcore militia members, mainly al-Qaida, or the Mahdi army. He was released 18 months later in December 2005.

With its fierce desert summers and uncompromising regime, Bucca has long been considered by Iraqi detainees to be the Middle Eastern version of Guantánamo Bay. But that is about to change. Under the Status of Forces security agreement signed between Iraq and the US late last year, Bucca is scheduled to close by midsummer, with all of its detainees transferred to the Iraqi prison system or released.

The agreement means the US military can no longer keep detainees without a valid detention order issued by an Iraqi court and must progressively release them to the vagaries of the Iraqi judicial system, which requires two witnesses and a confession to keep an accused person in custody.

"Our goal is to be close to being out of detainee operations by the end of 2009," said Brigadier General David Quantock, who runs the US detention programme in Iraq. "We want all of them gone or transferred to the government of Iraq."

Quantock claims the US exit strategy will be met with rising competence in the Iraqi justice system: "I am confident the rule of law will prevail.

"Sometimes, whether you go to Great Britain or the United States, a guilty guy goes free. Most of the folks that we have, the vast majority got in this business because of money, there were no jobs or because of fear of their lives, or because if you grow up in a bad neighbourhood you become a bad guy."

But among those the US army holds on to are about 5,000 men believed to be ideologically committed to the global jihadi insurgency. Among that group are a further 1,000 deemed to be "irreconcilables". Many of these men will soon be heading back to Abu Ghraib.

"You don't want to put the really bad guys in with the moderates," Quantock said. "So we practise the traditional counter-insurgency strategy of trying to insert a wedge between the extremists and the moderates. It sometimes takes a couple of years to figure it out. But for the most part we can get pretty close on some of these guys."

At Camp Cropper, a large, mainly open-air prison about a third the size of Abu Ghraib, detainees in garish yellow overalls mill around in separated wings, alleged al-Qaida members on one side and members of the Shia militia, the Mahdi army, on the other.

"The war's still on for these guys," said Camp Cropper's director, Brigadier General Robert Kenyon, as he walked the line above the perimeter wall earlier this month. Beneath were dozens of vibrantly coloured prayer mats laid out between concrete dormitories. This was deemed the al-Qaida wing. "You don't get a lot of interaction from these guys."

Alongside, US military police and Iraqi corrections officers were firing less-than-lethal rounds at people-shaped tin cut-outs in full view of the suspected insurgents, who paid them no heed. Idling ominously next to them was a giant circular machine on top of a Humvee, which can be used as a crowd control measure to emit piercing noises. "That thing will make you lose control of your bodily functions," said another US officer. "They're scared of it because they think it fries their brains. We haven't had to use it yet."

Iraqi officers spoke of skills training, which makes up a large part of detention centre life in Camp Cropper. Sewing classes are popular, as are computer courses and carpentry. Prisoners receive up to $1 a day.

Vocational training is being actively pushed as a means of putting a wedge between the abuses of the past and the detention centres now. Several signs at Camp Cropper order guards to "treat detainees with dignity and respect". However, the legacy of Abu Ghraib seems never far away.

"That was an unhappy time in this campaign," said Quantock. "We have learnt a lot and developed programmes to prevent anything like that from ever happening again."

Detention network

10,000 inmates will be sent to the newly named Baghdad central prison.

• During Saddam's regime, Abu Ghraib regularly held 30,000-plus inmates.

• The US military now has 14,410 detainees in Iraq, among them 2,453 being processed by the country's legal system.

• Camp Bucca on the Kuwait border is the biggest US detention centre, with about 8,000 detainees. Camp Cropper near Baghdad holds about 3,200.

• Camp Bucca is scheduled to close by mid-year. It is the biggest US detention centre in the world, rivalling Bagram air base in Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay in Cuba for infamy.

• The US detainee programme is due to wind down by the end of this year.