By Thomas Wagner
The Associated Press, 26 September 2005
U.S. and Iraqi authorities freed 500 detainees from the notorious Abu Ghraib prison on Monday in a goodwill gesture to Sunnis ahead of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Earlier, insurgents killed at least 10 people with a suicide bomb targeting police and government workers.
After a brief ceremony outside the prison on the outskirts of Baghdad, the 500 freed detainees left the area on public buses. They were the first of 1,000 to be freed before Ramadan begins next week, the U.S. military said.
Abu Ghraib gained international notoriety after U.S. military personnel running the prison were charged with humiliating and assaulting detainees there.
Arab governments often pardon nonviolent offenders during Ramadan. But the move this week also appeared to be part of a government effort to persuade citizens to vote in the Oct. 15 national referendum on Iraq's draft constitution, particularly the Sunni minority.
Approval of the constitution would be an important step in the country's democratic transformation. But many Sunni leaders and insurgents are calling for a boycott or a "no" vote in the referendum. They say the document would leave minority Sunnis with far less power than the country's Kurds and majority Shiites.
If two-thirds of voters in any three of Iraq's 18 provinces reject the charter, a new government must be formed and the process of writing a constitution starts over.
In renewed violence in Baghdad on Monday, a suicide car bomber attacked a police checkpoint guarding Iraq's oil ministry, irrigation ministry and national police academy and a private bus carrying 24 oil ministry employees, said police Capt. Nabil Abdel Qadir
The blast, which came before the prisoner release, killed at least seven policemen and three people on the bus, Qadir said. It wounded 36 Iraqis, 14 of them policemen and 22 of them bus passengers, he said.
Oil minister Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum rushed to the site.
"The insurgents are targeting Iraqi government employees and worshippers in mosques," he said. "These savage acts won't undermine the forthcoming people's referendum on the new Iraqi constitution."
The attack raised this week's death toll from violence in and around the capital to 43 Iraqis.
On Sunday, at least 33 Iraqis were killed during a day of stepped-up violence.
Gunmen loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ambushed an Iraqi patrol in an eastern Baghdad slum, and U.S. forces joined a 90-minute gunbattle, killing as many as eight of the attackers in the first significant violence in the neighborhood in nearly a year.
Al-Sadr's militia, the al-Mahdi Army, was a stubborn problem for American forces until a truce was negotiated about a year ago that allowed some U.S. troops to pull out of Sadr City to join the November assault on the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, west of the capital.
Before the truce, al-Sadr's forces had led unsuccessful but bloody uprisings against coalition forces in Kut and the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, south of Baghdad.
With the referendum on Iraq's new constitution less than three weeks away, violence in the poor Shiite district could deepen opposition among al-Sadr's supporters who are bucking mainstream Shiite support for the constitution.
Shiite unity has been seen as critical for passage of the basic law.
A statement from al-Sadr's office accused U.S. forces of trying to draw them into a battle "aimed at destroying Iraqi towns, particularly those in pro-Sadr areas and .... to prevent al-Sadr followers from voting" in the referendum.
Elsewhere in Baghdad on Sunday, armed men pulled off a daring armored car robbery, killing two guards and escaping with $850,000, and a suicide car bomber slammed into a convoy carrying Interior Ministry commandos, killing seven of them and two civilians.
South of the capital, two separate bicycle bombings in town markets killed at least seven people and wounded dozens Sunday.
In Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, three mortar shells landed in a residential district. One shell hit a house, killing seven members of one family, including children, according to police Capt. Laith Muhammed.
A U.S. soldier also died Sunday and two others were injured when their vehicle rolled over while on patrol near the Jordanian border, the military said.
The death raised to 1,914 the number of U.S. service members who have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count
Citation: Thomas Wagner. "U.S. Frees 500 Abu Ghraib Detainees," The Associated Press, 26 September 2005.
Original URL: http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5303004,00.html