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| Iraq | |
| US military releases 500 Iraqi prisoners, including journalists | |
| 2006-01-16 | |
| The US military released on Sunday some 500 prisoners cleared of ties to the Iraqi insurgency, including a pair of journalists, US military officials said. They said that the journalists had been held in Iraqi prisons for months. Majed Hameed, an Iraqi reporter for the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya network and the Reuters news agency, was released on Sunday after four months in US custody, US Army Brig Gen Mark Kimmitt said during a visit to Al-Arabiya’s headquarters in Dubai. Ali al-Mashhadani, a photographer and cameraman for Reuters, was also freed in the mass release of 500 prisoners from Abu Ghraib prison west of Baghdad, Reuters reported. Al-Mashhadani had been jailed in August last year. In Baghdad, US military spokesman Lt Col Barry Johnson confirmed that the two journalists were among those released after being cleared by the Iraqi and US Combined Review and Release Board. Kimmitt was greeted in Dubai by protesters carrying placards decrying the US military’s arrest of Hameed and other reporters. Kimmitt said that Hameed had been a suspected threat and was held until he was cleared. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said that US troops had detained Hameed on September 15 in Iraq’s Anbar province, and al-Mashhadani was held since being taken on August 8 by US Marines in a raid on his home.
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| Posted by:Fred |
| #1 Do you get the impression that the only important people among the 500 were journalists? Do you get the impression this was written by journalists? look on the brite side, A-Q and Saddamists will get more air time. |
| Posted by: Red Dog 2006-01-16 08:33 |