Baghdad - Iraqi authorities announced Tuesday that they have
released 81,397 detainees this week under a new amnesty, while two
abducted doctors were also freed after a sizable ransom payment.
The detainees were released under the amnesty law that was passed
by parliament in February.
Some 37,912 of the detainees were released on bail, judge Abdel-
Sattar al-Bairaqdar, the spokesman for the high court council, told
the state daily al-Sabah.
At least 24,534 people, who are wanted by the authorities, were
given amnesty under the law, the judge said.
However, US forces told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that it was
only less than 200 Iraqis who have actually been released from the
Iraqi system under the amnesty law.
Legal committees are now looking into requests for amnesty filed
by many detainees whose previous requests had been rejected. The new
law gives the right of appeal.
Thousands of Iraqi detainees are also being held in prisons run by
the US military.
The passage of the amnesty law was hailed as a breakthrough that
forms an important component of national reconciliation.
Iraq's main Sunni Arab bloc, the Iraqi Accord Front, said passage
of the law would speed up its return to the Shiite-led coalition
government and help heal sectarian divisions.
Separately, two Iraqi doctors and an assistant who were abducted
two weeks ago have been released after their families paid a ransom
to the kidnappers, security sources told dpa.
Sources said that the family of Sabar al-Qeisy, one of the
abducted doctors, paid 230,000 US dollars in ransom.
The doctors and the assistant were released on Monday and were in
stable health. But they had been tortured by the kidnappers, sources
said.
The release of the kidnapped doctors occurred near Haditha in
Anbar province.
Sources added that the kidnappers were suspected members of the
al-Qaeda terrorist network.
An Iraqi police source said that the US forces have managed to
arrest one of the kidnappers near Beiji area, some 23 kilometres
north of Baghdad.
Meanwhile, the US military said a massive cache containing weapons
and ammunition was uncovered in an underground room Monday during a
search operation in the Jazeera desert west of Samarra.
Information from a local Iraqi source led to the discovery of the
cache, according to the military.
In other news, nine people were killed and 50 injured in a suicide
car bomb attack on provincial police headquarters in the northern
city of Mosul on Monday, Iraqi media reported.
Among those killed were four policemen and two children, the Aswat
al-Iraq (Voices of Iraq) agency reported.
A suicide attacker drove and detonated an explosives-laden car
near a checkpoint outside the police headquarters.
Medical sources told dpa that an 11-year-old-child was killed on
Tuesday when militants opened fire on him after he was leaving his
school in Baquba, some 60 kilometres north of Baghdad.
In the same city, security forces found the body of a child which
was reported to be abducted on Saturday, sources told Voices of Iraq.
Sources said that the body was found near a hospital in Baquba's
Katon district.
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