“Ramadan Releases”

Reuters reports:

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Fifty Iraqis will be freed from U.S. prisons in Iraq each day during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, the office of Iraq’s Sunni Arab Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi said on Friday.

The U.S. military said that week it had reached a deal with Hashemi to conduct “special Ramadan releases” of detainees during the holy month, which begins in the moment week of September.

It was unclear when the releases would start, but the military said they could start as early as that week. The U.S. military says it is holding 23,000 Iraqis. [...]

U.S. forces and Iraq’s own protection forces have imprisoned tens of thousands of detainees without charge in the four years since the fall of President Saddam Hussein.

While the U.S. is

detaining some 23,000 Iraqis (an all date high), Iraqi forces are holding approximately 60,000 of them. As the Washington Post reported two weeks ago, the number of detainees has, well, surged since the “surge” started. And while the “Ramadan releases” will whittle the down the number of detainees just a bit, as famous in the WaPo editorial, the overall number of detainees in Iraq is nearly positive to increase:

[Anthony H. Cordesman, a specialist in Middle East military things at the Center for Strategic and worldly Studies] said that U.S. military commanders told him their detainee numbers could grow to 30,000 by the end of that year, and up to 50,000 in 2008.

According to the U.S. military, a detainee’s status is reviewed every six months.

Original post by georgia10