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In what it called a gesture of reconciliation, the US-led administration in Iraq has said it will release more than 500 prisoners detained as "low-level security threats" over the past eight months. At the same time, the authority said it would take a more aggressive approach to hunting down leading figures in Saddam Hussein's regime still on its most-wanted list and other senior targets believed to be directing those fighting against the occupying forces. "It is time for reconciliation, time for Iraqis to make common cause," Paul Bremer, the US administrator in Iraq, told a news conference, flanked by Adnan...

<p>CNN's Karl Penhaul on the outlook for 2004 in Iraq.</p> <p>WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Three American soldiers have been discharged from military service for abusing Iraqi prisoners, the U.S. Army said Monday.</p> <p>The soldiers had been facing a court-martial proceeding, but agreed instead to a nonjudicial one. In addition to the discharges, two soldiers had their ranks lowered, and all three were ordered to forfeit pay for two months.</p>

Maj. William Vickers, 36, is accused of dereliction of duty for allegedly letting his men mistreat prisoners at Camp Whitehorse, a small facility outside Nasiriyah, about 180 miles outside Baghdad. He is the first of eight reservist Marines charged with abusing prisoners to undergo a court hearing. One of those prisoners died. Military prosecutors say Vickers failed to prevent his guards from keeping Iraqi prisoners awake and on their feet 50 minutes of every hour for hours on end. The prisoners, who were handcuffed behind their backs, also had bags covering their heads part of the time. However, Col. William...

Case opens in treatment of Iraqis CAMP PENDLETON – The first of eight cases against Marines charged with abusing – and in one case killing – Iraqi prisoners went to court here yesterday. Maj. William Vickers is charged with failing to obey an order or regulation for allegedly allowing his men to mistreat prisoners while he was in charge of a small detention facility outside Nasiriyah, about 180 miles southeast of Baghdad. The charges against the eight range from dereliction of duty to negligent homicide. "This is a case, a situation about what is right and what is wrong when...

<p>Two Marines have been charged in the death of a POW who was a high-ranking Iraqi Baath party official captured with a weapon that belonged to the Army maintenance company ambushed outside Nasiriyah, Iraq, in March, Marine officials said.</p> <p>Maj. Clark Paulus, of Buckingham, Pa., and Lance Cpl. Christian Hernandez, of Queens, N.Y., were charged Oct. 17 with negligent homicide in the death of Nagem Sadoon Hatab, who was found dead June 6 in his holding cell.</p>

PHILADELPHIA - The families of four U.S. Army reservists accused of abusing Iraqi prisoners of war have enlisted politicians, veterans groups and hundreds of friends to help persuade the military to dismiss the charges at a hearing next week. The four soldiers, all with the 320th Military Police Battalion based in Ashley, Pa., are charged with punching and kicking several Iraqis, breaking one man's nose, while escorting a busload of prisoners to a POW processing center near Umm Qasr in May. Details of the allegations haven't been released by the Army, and the soldiers said they have been ordered not...

Up to 3,000 Iraqis - some of them civilians - believed to be gagged, bound, hooded and beaten at US camps close to Baghdad airport The United States is illegally holding thousands of Iraqi prisoners of war and other captives without access to human rights officials at compounds close to Baghdad airport, The Observer has learnt. There have also been reports of a mutiny last week by prisoners at an airport compound, in protest against conditions. The uprising was 'dealt with' by the Americans, according to a US military source. The International Committee of the Red Cross so far has...

First Published 2003-05-16, Last Updated 2003-05-16 15:04:54POWs taken mostly in southern Iraq Iraqi POWs tortured by US, UK forces: Amnesty Mistreatment of POWs includes beating with fist, feet, weapons and electric shocks. LONDON - At least 20 Iraqi prisoners of war, including civilians, said they had been tortured by British and US troops in central and southern Iraq, a spokesman for International Human Rights group Amnesty International said Friday. "As of Wednesday we had interviewed 20 people," Amnesty researcher Said Boumedouha said, referring to prisoners of war who alleged they had been tortured by the British and US military...

POW's Memory Is Casualty Of War WASHINGTON, May 8, 2003 (CBS) It's unlikely that Pfc. Jessica Lynch will ever remember what happened in Iraq when her Army convoy was ambushed and she was taken as a prisoner of war, her doctor said Thursday. This information sheds new light on a small part of the war that has been shrouded in secrecy — with various versions only now emerging about Lynch's injuries nearly seven weeks ago and the commando raid that rescued her April 1. Doctors have completed surgeries for various fractures and broken bones that the 20-year-old Army clerk suffered...

US Troops Release Another 250 Iraqi POWs In So. Iraq UMM QASR, Iraq (AP)--U.S. forces released another 250 Iraqi war prisoners Tuesday in southern Iraq, as they continued to empty out U.S.-run detention camps which once housed some 7,000 men. In the past two weeks, more than 5,000 prisoners of war as well as civilian detainees have been released from Camp Bucca after a military tribunal determined they posed no threat, said Sgt. Maj. Ambrose Michelino, a U.S. military policeman. About 1,800 to 1,900 prisoners remain in captivity in this southern Iraqi port city, he said. He said most of...

<p>Chanting "Saddam no, Bush yes," some 200 Iraqi prisoners of war were let go Sunday at the coalition's main internment camp in the desert near the southern port of Umm Qasr.</p> <p>The men, many of them barefooted, shook hands with the American soldiers guarding the camp before boarding buses and trucks to be driven to nearby Basra, southern Iraq's largest city.</p>

CAMP BUCCA, Iraq April 27 — Chanting "Saddam no, Bush yes," some 200 Iraqi prisoners of war were let go Sunday at the coalition's main internment camp in the desert near the southern port of Umm Qasr.The men, many of them barefooted, shook hands with the American soldiers guarding the camp before boarding buses and trucks to be driven to nearby Basra, southern Iraq's largest city.Their departure brought to 700 the number of POWs released since Friday, said Maj. Stacy Garrity of the U.S. Army's 800th Military Police Brigade, which runs the camp. Around 5,800 more prisoners, including some from...

CAMP BUCCA, Iraq (Reuters) - U.S. military forces freed 200 Iraqi prisoners of war from their main internment camp in southern Iraq on Sunday as part of plans to release thousands of soldiers captured after Saddam Hussein sent them to fight. Former POWs, many of them shoeless and wearing tattered military garb or U.S.-issued blue coveralls, squatted patiently in a driving sandstorm before camp guards called them to board buses and trucks where they began singing, chanting and ululating with the joy of going home. Slight, curly-haired Thacker al-Rubai told Reuters his wife and five children had no idea he...

US holds 7,300 POWs in Iraq, soon determining fate By Deborah Charles WASHINGTON, April 9 (Reuters) - American-led forces have captured at least 7,300 prisoners of war in Iraq and will soon begin the legal process to determine their future, the U.S. military said on Wednesday. In a briefing at the Pentagon from the U.S. military's main prisoner of war camp in Umm Qasr in southern Iraq, the colonel in charge of the facility said planners had been prepared to capture many more prisoners -- up to 50,000. "We were planning for about 50,000 ... or higher," said U.S. Army...

<p>GENEVA (AP) -- The international Red Cross said Friday it has seen more than 3,000 Iraqi prisoners of war but has yet to receive permission from Iraqi officials to visit the Americans they are holding.</p> <p>The International Committee of the Red Cross said most Iraqi POWs were registered in southern Iraq. U.S. Central Command says coalition forces hold more than 4,000 Iraqi prisoners of war.</p>

More than 6,500 Iraqi prisoners are being held by UK forces in Iraq, the Government has announced. The total last Thursday was 4,100, said Defence Procurement Minister Lord Bach. "Iraqi military personnel who fall into the hands of UK forces are prisoners of war and therefore will be treated in accordance with the Geneva Conventions," he said. Paramilitaries, or so-called "unlawful combatants", would be treated "under the terms of humanitarian law", he told Liberal Democrat peers' leader Baroness Williams of Crosby. They would be looked after "both humanely and safely". And the UK would have a veto on any US...

Here's just a little photo to keep in mind when you hear someone going on (and on) about "American brutality" yada, yada, yada, in Iraq. ========================================= A wounded Iraqi prisoner of war holds his intravenous fluid pack while US Army soldiers carry him to a US Army medical evacuation helicopter for transfer to a nearby US military field hospital for treatment on April 3. Photo: AFP

Marines Say About 2,500 Guards Surrender .c The Associated Press CAMP AS SAYLIYAH, Qatar (AP) - U.S. Marines have reported that about 2,500 Iraqi Republican Guards surrendered between Kut and Baghdad, U.S. Central Command said Friday. The surrender apparently occurred after clashes of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force and the Republican Guard's Baghdad Division, said Navy Capt. Frank Thorp, spokesman at U.S. Central Command. He stressed that Central Command had only received the report from the Marines on the ground and couldn't confirm it outright. ``We have reports of approximately 2,500 soldiers of the Iraqi Republican Guard laying down their...

Will President George W. Bush allow Iraqi troops to come to America, enjoy better welfare and health care benefits than our own soldiers, and endanger national security? It has happened before. After Gulf War I, the first Bush administration and the Clinton administration recklessly opened our borders to former Iraqi prisoners of war -- from conscripts to elite Republican Guardsmen. The resettlement program was launched in response to pressure from the United Nations, the Saudi government (which balked at taking in the captured soldiers), and our own feckless State Department (which has, and always will, act like a hostile foreign...

Britain says over 9,000 Iraqis now POWs LONDON, April 3 (Reuters) - More than 9,000 Iraqis have been taken prisoner of war by U.S.-British troops, British Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon said on Thursday. Hoon told parliament that British forces now held key suburbs of Iraq's second city, Basra, and would foray further into the city when they judged the time to be right. He said UK servicemen were focused on winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people as much as military action. "That is why it is so important that in a number of areas where UK forces...