500 Are Released From Abu Ghraib

Five hundred prisoners were released from the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison Tuesday in a goodwill gesture to mark the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The detainees were presented with a Koran and $25 on their release, which marked Eid al-Fitr celebrations. An additional 1,000 prisoners had been set free at the start of the month of fasting.

All 1,500 were released after their cases had gone before an Iraqi-led review board and they were found not to have committed serious or violent crimes, the U.S. military said in a statement.

“These detainees have confessed to their crimes, renounced violence and pledged to be good citizens of Iraq,” it said.

U.S. forces are holding 13,885 detainees, including 5,074 at Abu Ghraib, behind barbed wire at several facilities across Iraq, up from a total of about 11,800 a month ago, a spokesman for the U.S. military’s prison operations said.

Also on Tuesday, the U.S. military said an American soldier had been killed by a roadside bomb in central Iraq the day before, raising to at least 93 the number of U.S. service members who died in October, the fourth-deadliest month for the troops in the Iraq war.

Iraq’s government, meanwhile, blamed a Moroccan based in Syria for a triple car bomb attack that killed at least 60 people north of Baghdad.

In a statement, the government identified the Moroccan as Muhsen Khayber, also known as Abdul-Majid Libi and Abdul-Rahim, who is also sought in his homeland for terrorist bombings in Casablanca in May 2003.

The statement alleged that Khayber had masterminded the Sept. 29 attack in which three vehicles exploded almost simultaneously in Balad, a mainly Shiite market town 50 miles north of Baghdad.

Iraqi officials did not cite any evidence to link Khayber to the Balad attacks but have long maintained that foreign Islamic extremists play a major role in suicide bombings in Iraq.

Spanish authorities, however, believe Khayber was part of a network linked to Ansar al-Islam, an Islamic extremist group based in northern Iraq that recruits foreign fighters to battle the U.S.-led coalition.

The Iraqi statement said Khayber had moved last year to Syria, “where he helped organize terrorist cells for foreign terrorists” who were sent to Iraq.