Iraq Frees Detainees Under Amnesty Plan

A US soldier talks to a detainee shortly before he was released at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. About 450 detainees were released from prisons in Iraq under a peace plan Al-Qaeda-led insurgents brushed aside by vowing to carry on the bloodshed.(AFP/POOL/Ali Jasim)

by Jay Deshmukh

June 27, 2006

ABU GHRAIB, Iraq (AFP) -About 450 detainees have been released from Iraqi and US-run prisons under a reconciliation plan aimed at bringing insurgents into the political process and ending the deadly tide of bloodshed in Iraq.

But at least 21 people were killed, a day after dozens died in a wave of violence, including 22 people blown up by a motorbike bomb while they were watching a World Cup match in a largely Shiite village.

The detainees held at Abu Ghraib and other facilities run by the US military and Iraqis were freed under an amnesty contained in the reconciliation plan presented to parliament on Sunday by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

Kurdish lawmaker Mahmud Othman said seven armed groups were holding talks with President Jalal Talabani on laying down their arms, but were demanding "that there must be a timetable for withdrawal of foreign forces and also their resistance to foreign forces must be legitimately recognised."

The United States confirmed Monday that it was considering a plan to sharply reduce its 130,000 strong force in Iraq by the end of 2007, but said it was just one option among many and was not "engraved in stone."

The New York Times also reported Tuesday that Sunni-led insurgents groups have approached the Iraqi government with offers to start negotiations on the basis of the reconciliation plan.

"There are signals" from "some armed groups to sit at the negotiating table," MP Hassan al-Suneid, a member of Maliki's Shiite Dawa party, told the newspaper on Tuesday.

A US military spokesman in charge of detainee operations said all of the 2,500 inmates released since Maliki first unveiled his initiative are just suspected of being involved in the insurgency but have committed no violent crimes like bombing, killing, torture and kidnapping.

Almost 13,000 detainees remain in US custody.

Although there have been numerous releases from Abu Ghraib and other facilities since the April 2004 prisoner abuse scandal, both US and Iraqi authorities were eager to link the latest releases to the Maliki plan.

"There must have been a good security reason for them to be arrested. They all were detained for security reasons," Rubaie told AFP.

"What is this reconciliation plan? I have always been an innocent man and never fought with anyone on the basis of religion, but look what happened to me," Abbas Hamid from Baghdad, who was imprisoned for five months, said angrily.

Maliki's 24-point reconciliation programme promised amnesty only to those detainees who have committed no crimes.

But some influential Sunni Arab leaders like Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi have said that without a clear and unconditional amnesty to all "resistance fighters" the plan would do little to stem the insurgency, which has now branched out into vicious sectarian violence.

"We were expecting a clear nod to the resistance and a clear strategy on how to lure it to the political process, but the plan has fallen short of that," he said Monday.

This manifested itself on the ground since Monday in violence that has claimed the lives of almost 70 people.

On Tuesday 10 people in the restive city of Baquba were killed in a spate of shootings.

Three people were killed and 10 others wounded in a suicide bombing in the ethnically mixed northern oil hub of Kirkuk as a bomber detonated his car at a petrol station used by government officials, security officials said.

Elsewhere in Iraq eight other people were killed.

But the deadliest attack was on Monday near Baquba. Twenty-two Iraqis, including children, were killed when a motorbike bomb exploded in a market square where villagers were watching a World Cup football match in the Shiite village of Khairnabat.

Tension were running high in the impoverished village, with villagers brandishing weapons fearing further attacks by rebels during the funeral for the victims.

The Baquba area, with its explosive mix of Sunnis and Shiites, is one of the main fronts in the sectarian violence ravaging Iraq.

Meanwhile, there was no word on 10 Sunni Arab students kidnapped from their hostel in Karradah on Monday.

But this was disputed by many freed detainees.