BAGHDAD, 11 January 2004 — Two US military trucks rumbled out of Baghdad’s central prison Thursday afternoon, with dozens of waving hands visible above the sides of the truck beds. A mile down the highway, they suddenly halted. Military police lowered the tailgates, and 66 men in blue or red jumpsuits tumbled out onto the pavement, disheveled and bewildered.
The prisoners’ release came after US officials announced they would begin freeing as many as 500 nonviolent detainees as part of an amnesty program designed to encourage public support, thus arousing hopes among families of an estimated 9,000 prisoners currently in military custody.
Within moments, the men were surrounded by camera crews and mobbed by Iraqis who had waited all day outside the Abu Ghraib prison for news of their detained relatives. But there were no shrieks of recognition or tearful embraces. Instead, strangers thrust snapshots into the men’s faces, demanding to know if the freed prisoners had seen their sons or brothers.
“Do you know my son Mansour? He has long hair. This is his picture,” a stout, perspiring man in a business suit kept asking.
“Have you seen Abdul Latif? He’s from Tilafa,” a younger man murmured, holding up a tiny photo.
The newly released prisoners peered at the photos and shook their heads. “No, I’m sorry, I haven’t seen him,” they replied again and again, glancing at the military police with assault rifles standing guard. Within a few minutes, most of the freed Iraqis had been offered rides and vanished into the traffic.
It was a bizarre and inconclusive ending to a day that had begun with intense anticipation among prisoners’ families following the announcement Tuesday of the conditional amnesty program by US officials, who said they would begin by releasing the first 100 detainees on Thursday.
Paul Bremer, administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the US-led occupation authority, called the program an effort to “promote reconciliation” and to offer “a new chance” for Iraqis who had “made a mistake” by supporting ousted President Saddam Hussein and his Baath Party, but did not have “bloodstained hands.”
Bremer said the prisoners would be released on the personal guarantee of their community leaders, and other US officials said they were trying to build on Iraqi public support that followed Saddam’s capture last month.
Hundreds of families began gathering early Thursday morning outside the vast prison west of Baghdad. They said they had heard about the planned releases, and even those uncertain whether their relatives were inside expressed hope that they would miraculously be freed. By midday, cars crammed the dusty visitors’ lot and lined both sides of the highway.
All day they waited: women veiled in black clutching white “detainee information” forms, robed tribal chiefs inquiring after village youths, fathers looking for their sons, wives looking for their husbands. Repeatedly they pressed closer, spilling through scrolls of barbed wire. Repeatedly the burly military policemen pushed them back, shouting and waving their rifles.
Meanwhile, the people told their stories, each protesting the innocence of their detained relatives. A man said US forces found helium for filling children’s balloons in his shop and arrested his sons on suspicion of making bombs. A woman said her family had been camping in a vacant lot next to the home of an Iraqi nuclear scientist and her husband was arrested as a suspected associate.
“I have been here so many times, trying to find out about my son, and they still won’t let me inside,” said Fakhria Najhi, 55, whose son, a computer student, was arrested three months ago. “He was never in the army, he was never a Baathist. He is innocent,” she insisted. “I hope they will release him today, but mostly I just want to know if he is alive.”
Jalib Jabar Ikal, 30, said his uncle, a former army intelligence officer, had turned himself in to US authorities last spring, then was freed and cooperated with them for months, only to be detained suddenly in October.
“We are frustrated because the Americans don’t keep their promises,” he said, asserting that his uncle had been ostracized by Saddam’s government for being too lenient with Shiites and had welcomed the US invasion. “Our whole tribe wanted to help them, but now we have lost our trust,” he said bitterly.
At one point, an open truck full of new prisoners pulled in, their heads covered with yellow hoods. A short while later, a woman emerged from the prison entrance and collapsed in the parking lot, shouting hysterically that the Americans had refused to let her inside even though she had a visitor’s permit for Thursday.
“They are all liars and thieves,” she screamed, sobbing. “They say they will release people today and instead they bring them in with sacks over their heads. My son has been captured for three months. Who will tend the sheep? Who will feed the children?”
Just after 3:30 p.m., military policemen blocked the highway and waved two trucks out of the compound, escorted by troops in armored vehicles. People gasped, cheered and raced for their cars, following the convoy as it sped toward nowhere.
Suddenly, the trucks stopped and the prisoners stepped down, milling in confusion on the road, clutching plastic bags of belongings. As the families reached them and searched their faces, their hopeful expressions changed.
It was unclear whether these prisoners were part of the new program or whether they had been freed as part of a different, more routine release — the kind that occurs regularly with prisoners whom occupation authorities no longer deem threatening or useful. The prisoners said they had not been given notice they were going to be freed, were not expecting to be met and had not heard about the amnesty program.
At a news conference later Thursday, Bremer’s chief spokesman said the process of releasing the special prisoners was under way and that the 100 promised beneficiaries were “ready to be released today.” He would not say whether the group freed Thursday was part of that program, however, and he suggested that some prisoners might have to wait until community leaders “come forward” to guarantee and receive them.
Among the 66 set free on the road, most said they had not been physically abused in prison, but some complained of being held in cold and crowded conditions, and others muttered vaguely about seeking revenge against occupation forces. One man said he had been put inside a metal trash container while bars were pounded loudly on the outside as a form of punishment.
“I just thank God I am all right,” said Kamal Khaled Aziz, 30, who said he had been detained in October during a raid in Tikrit, the city that was Saddam’s stronghold, while visiting cousins on their farm. “We did not believe we were getting out. We thought they were just transferring us,” he said. “I still like the Americans, but the raids they do are wrong.”
