500 Abu Ghraib detainees released

US and Iraqi authorities freed 500 detainees from the notorious Abu Ghraib prison yesterday in a goodwill gesture to Sunnis ahead of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, as 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 left the area on public buses. They were the first of 1,000 to be freed before Ramadan begins next week, the US military said.

Abu Ghraib gained international notoriety after US 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 Octoberreferendum 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.

They say the document would leave minority Sunnis with far less power than the Kurds and majority Shi’ites.

Meanwhile, in renewed violence in Baghdad yesterday, 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.

The blast, which came before the prisoner release, killed at least seven policemen and three people on the bus. It wounded 36, 14 of them policemen and 22 bus passengers.

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 a gun battle between gunmen loyal to radical Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and Iraqi and US forces.

Also that day, armed men pulled off an armoured car robbery, killing two guards and stealing $850,000 (€705,000), and a suicide car bomber slammed into a convoy carrying Iraqi commandos, killing seven of them and two civilians.