BAGHDAD — U.S. authorities freed 500 Iraqi prisoners Thursday in an ongoing push to empty American jails of detainees no longer deemed a threat. But the military says it’s still holding 25,800 Iraqis waiting to face charges or be given freedom.
The latest release provided only small relief to a detention system strained to the limit by about 17,000 new suspects captured this year in campaigns to secure Baghdad and its surrounding belts, the military said. U.S. officials worry the overcrowded detention camps are sapping resources and will overwhelm Iraq’s struggling justice system.
The periodic releases are seen as both a symbolic gesture to highlight increased security and a needed safety valve. About 6,300 detainees have been released since January.
The ceremony – held behind concrete blast walls at Camp Victory, a sprawling U.S. base that contains several of Saddam Hussein’s former palaces – coincided with other signs of progress in regaining control of former extremist strongholds since the arrival of 30,000 additional U.S. troops earlier this year.
U.S. forces, meanwhile, have made important alliances with Sunni clan leaders to battle extremists such as al-Qaeda in Iraq.
But Sunni leaders also complain that members of their sect make up the vast majority in both American and Iraqi custody.
Flanked by U.S. soldiers, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki addressed the detainees, many wearing identical plaid shirts.
“Dear brothers, let’s cooperate to shut down these prisons and write a new page of laws with the power of justice,” al-Maliki told the men, who sat in rows of white plastic chairs under the Baghdad sun.
The military issued a press release saying the detainees are “no longer an imperative threat to Iraqi/coalition forces and the security of Iraq.”
One of the men, who identified himself as Jumaa Khashan, a Sunni from Ramadi, said he was arrested in 2005 on his way to visit relatives in the neighboring town of Khalidiya.
“At first, the treatment was bad … but this year the treatment became better,” Khashan said. “I hope that Iraqis will renounce violence and work together to build a new Iraq.”
Meanwhile, there were signs of more unrest in Iraq’s second-largest city, Basra, where Shiite factions and Iraqi security forces have been battling for power after the withdrawal of British forces to the airport on the edge of the city.
The general director of the Basra education department, Qahtan al-Mousawi, survived an attempt on his life when a roadside bomb exploded next to his convoy in central Basra around 8 a.m. Thursday, police said. It was the third assassination attempt on top officials in the city in less than a week.
Two of al-Mousawi’s bodyguards and two pedestrians were wounded, police said.
Al-Mousawi is an influential member of the Supreme Islamic Iraq Council, Iraq’s largest Shiite party. Thursday’s bombing was the latest episode in escalating tensions between Shiite rivalries in the city, about 340 miles southeast of Baghdad.
The city’s police chief, Maj. Gen. Jalil Khalaf, survived bomb attacks on his convoy twice in the past five days.
At least 19 people were killed or found dead across Iraq, including seven found in an Anbar mass grave.
They included a policeman killed by a roadside bomb southeast of Baghdad and a civilian woman killed when a suicide bomber struck a Kurdish political party’s office near Mosul.
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The money is about a quarter of the $196 billion requested by Bush. It would finance about four months of combat in Iraq, Pelosi told reporters on Thursday.
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Syria OKs entry for U.S. refugee screeners
WASHINGTON — Syria has agreed to allow U.S. interviewers into the country to screen Iraqi refugees for admission to the United States, clearing a major obstacle to the Bush administration’s resettlement program, the State Department said Thursday.
Syria, home to between 1.2 million and 1.4 million Iraqi refugees, had for months refused to issue visas to the interviewers amid deepening tensions between Washington and Damascus over alleged Syrian support for extremists, interference in Lebanon and suspect nuclear activity.
Aside from the Iraqi refugees in Syria, there are 750,000 Iraqi refugees in Jordan, 100,000 in Egypt, 54,000 in Iran, 40,000 in Lebanon, 10,000 in Turkey and 200,000 in various Persian Gulf countries, according to a United Nations panel.
The U.N. has so far referred about 12,000 of those refugees to the United States for resettlement, but bureaucratic logjams and logistical hurdles have hamstrung U.S. efforts to admit them. The administration allowed in only 1,608 Iraqi refugees this past fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30.
The U.S. plans to admit 12,000 refugees in the current fiscal year, but just 450 were let in during October, less than half the monthly average needed to reach the target.
