Twenty Jordanians arrive home from detention in Iraq

Associated Press ^ | Jan 18, 2004 | Shafika Mattar

[witnesstothefall]

AMMAN, Jordan -- Twenty Jordanians arrived home Sunday after spending up to nine months in a U.S.-British detention camp in Iraq.

"I'm happy to return home and to reunite with my family," Raed Abdullah Abul-Saqer told The Associated Press at Amman airport after alighting from an aircraft owned by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Abul-Saqer, 22, a trader, was released Saturday from a detention camp outside the southern Iraqi port of Umm Qasr. He said he was arrested in Baghdad on April 10 on suspicion of links with President Saddam Hussein's guerrillas who were fighting the U.S.-led coalition that had invaded Iraq.

"They accused me and all the other Jordanian detainees of being members of Fedayyin Saddam," Abul-Saqer said. "It's not an honor to be affiliated with Saddam's fighters because they are simply a bunch of cowards and traitors."

Abul-Saqer said he was in Iraq representing the trading company that he worked for in Jordan. He was stranded in Baghdad when the U.S.-led war broke out on March 20. He was arrested when U.S.-led coalition forces subsequently began rounding up Iraqis and Arabs suspected of affiliation with the ousted Iraqi regime.

He said the coalition forces questioned him in the detention camp, but they "never tortured or beat me or any other detainee there."

But, he and the other Jordanians detainees were neither put on trial nor charged with an offense, he said.

Sunday's release is the second since Dec. 13, when five Jordanians from the same camp were flown home.

The Jordanian government said Sunday's release brings to 12 the number of Jordanians held in Iraq on suspicion of links with the toppled Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein.

There was no information Sunday on the fate of the remaining 12 Jordanians.

Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher said Saturday the latest release was the "culmination of Jordanian efforts exerted in the past few months."

In November, the 37 Jordanian detainees - most of them students, drivers and workers - managed to send an appeal to Jordan's King Abdullah II to help free them. They said they had been held for seven months at a detention camp called Bucca Camp No. 5 near Umm Qasr.

The government promptly initiated contacts through the U.S. Embassy.

Jordanian security officials have said they doubted the detained Jordanians were among those Arabs who joined Iraq paramilitary groups to battle the U.S. forces.

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"It's not an honor to be affiliated with Saddam's fighters because they are simply a bunch of cowards and traitors."

[WHATNEXT?]

Meaning they didn't fight to the death against the U.S.