AT the barbed wire fence around Iraq's notorious Abu Ghraib prison, Safia Shamri pleaded with a US soldier to be allowed to take a glimpse of her only remaining son, who has been in jail since last October.

"I come here just to cry and beg them to see my son. It's as if we are animals, not human beings," said 45-year-old Shamri as she waited next to the guard house towers outside the complex. "Are these the human rights that Bush is talking about?"

Shamri says her two sons were in a car on the way to the town of Kerbala in October when they were fired on by US troops after a nearby checkpoint had been attacked. She saw the body of Haidar, 17, in the morgue, riddled with bullets. She has been told that 20-year-old Ali was imprisoned after the incident.

Shamri is one of the many Iraqis who flock to the prison -- women clutching scraps of paper with identification numbers and photos, fathers looking for their sons, wives for their husbands, robed trial chiefs inquiring about villagers.

Relatives wait for hours as two lorry loads of new prisoners are brought in with their heads covered with sacks. Many have been trying for months -- in vain -- to see their relatives.

"I was happy when the Americans came and liberated us from Saddam but when we saw injustice again we said Saddam was more merciful," said Shamri, who lives in Baghdad.

Meanwhile, the US Army says it is holding around 9,500 detainees across Iraq. It says detainees are processed promptly -- within 72 hours and decision must be made to release them, transfer them into the criminal justice system, or classify them as "security detainees" which means they can be held for longer.

For relatives of those classed as security detainees due to suspected involvement in guerrilla attacks, the only word on the fate of the prisoners comes from others who have been released.

Relatives talk of a fruitless search from one police station and US base to another just to get word on their loved ones. The lucky ones get an identification number so they can start the arduous route of seeking a prison visit.

Every day, queues of large trailers carry gravel and construction material to the Abu Ghraib, which is being renovated to cope with the rising number of inmates.

Former army officer Ahmad Jibouri, 27, who has been a detainee himself, was searching for his brother and a nephew a day after their arrest in a dawn raid.

"They are taking our men. Americans want to build prisons, not the country," he said. Ex-prisoners say conditions vary in the eight large camps in Abu Ghraib, each of which holds 600 to 700 security detainees in smaller tents housing 20 to 30 inmates.

Iraqi contractors have provided inmates with two hot meals a day since the previous diet of US ration packs was scrapped.

Ordinary criminals are held in the old part of the complex, which had execution chambers during the rule of Saddam Hussein.

One Nejem Abdul Hussein Soudani says he was arrested last August with his eldest son Kutaiba in a raid on Baghdad's Hay al-Khadra neighbourhood, which overlooks a highway where US troops come under frequent attack, and spent over four months in the prison.

He said the interrogator kept telling him: "I saw you in Afghanistan", perhaps because of his long beard. Inmates say they are usually interrogated by US soldiers with Arabic-speaking interpreters.