Iraq frees more detainees under 'reconciliation' drive

BAGHDAD - More than 150 Iraqi prisoners were released on Sunday under a national reconciliation plan announced by new Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki last week to free a total of 2,500 inmates, witnesses said.

Many protested their innocence and said they were detained at random.

"I went to a funeral and I ended up here," said Awad Jassim Mohammad, a man in his 60s, who said he was arrested on June 30, 2004 on suspicion of attacking US forces. Abu Ghraib is the site of a US prisoner abuse scandal in 2004.

The second group of inmates to be released in less than a week emerged from the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad into the blistering sun.

Some held copies of the Koran and carried prayer rugs under the arms. They were received by Sunni Arab Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi.

Nearly 600 detainees were released on Wednesday under a plan Maliki's Shi'ite-led government hopes will draw members of the disgruntled minority Sunni community into the US-backed political process in a bid to defuse the Sunni insurgency.

Wearing a traditional white Arab dishdasha, or long robe, and leaning on a cane, Mohammad told reporters when asked if he was guilty: "Thank God I was not."

Abdul Kareem Yassin Amash, 38, said he was arrested a year ago while he slept in his home in the northern city of Mosul.

"I'm leaving and I still don't know (the charges)," he said.

"I'm not thinking about myself right now, I'm thinking about the thousands who are still here," said Amash, sporting a greying moustache and stubble and an Arab headdress.

"There are people with families, kids, and they've been some for three years ... and forgotten about."

One woman yelled and then fainted when she learned her son was not among those freed from US and Iraqi detention centres.

"My son has been held nine months," she screamed. "My son."

Another freed detainee ran towards his family, hugging his father and kneeling down to kiss his feet as a woman relative cried.

Maliki, a Shi'ite Islamist whose three-week old government received a huge morale boost with the killing of al Qaeda in Iraq's leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi, hopes the inclusion in his government of national unity of Sunni Arabs once dominant under Saddam Hussein will help tame the insurgency.

When he made the prisoner release announcement, Maliki said it will only include people who had no evidence against them and who were not Saddam Hussein loyalists or people with "Iraqi blood on their hands."

A critical UN human rights report last month said that there were 28,700 detainees in Iraq, including 5,000 held by the Interior Ministry.

US and Iraqi prison officials do not give a breakdown of the detainees' sectarian affiliation, but most are believed to be Sunni Arabs.

Leaders of the Sunni Arab community, wary of the US-backed political process which brought the empowerment of the long- oppressed Shi'ite majority, have demanded the release of Sunni prisoners from US- and Iraqi-run jails.

Arkan Abdullah, 17, who said he was arrested in February while working on a farm, said he was hopeful the release of prisoners would promote national reconciliation.

"It's a good start and hopefully the government will make it, but I'm a student and probably missed most of my tests and exams," he said.

- REUTERS