Embattled Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said yesterday that he would release 2,500 prisoners with no clear evidence against them or who were mistakenly detained, in a move to help reach "national reconciliation."
The first batch of 500 prisoners were to be freed today, from a total of 28,700 detainees being held in Iraqi and US prisons across the country as of April 30.
"We hope they will abide by not violently objecting to the political process. This is a strong move which will encourage others," he said, in a clear reference to the minority Sunni community, which forms the backbone of the insurgency against his government.
Maliki said a committee was being formed to review the status of all prisoners but at the same time he would use force against those who continued violent acts.
"Those who will be released will be people who are not [former president] Saddam Hussein loyalists or terrorists or anyone who has Iraqi blood on their hands," he said in a televised press conference.
"Those who committed killings or bombings will not be released and they will be banned from being released," he said.
Meanwhile, at least nine people were killed yesterday in attacks across Iraq, as police found nine severed heads outside Baqubah in two boxes used to carry fruit.
Two men were killed and seven wounded as insurgents fired three mortars which crashed near the Interior Ministry building, security officials and medics said.
The first mortar did not cause casualties, an interior ministry official said.
"The other two fell in an industrial area close to the ministry and killed the two men and wounded seven others," the official said.
An Iraqi woman was killed in an explosion at central Baghdad's Al-Alawi bus and taxi station, the official said. A man was also wounded in the attack.
Three people, including a policeman and a woman, were shot dead in separate incidents in and around Baqubah, northeast of the capital, police officials said. Police found nine heads wrapped in black plastic bags and shoved in two cardboard boxes used to carry fruit on the highway outside Baqubah.
Some of the heads were blindfolded and already decomposing, indicating the killings had taken place a few days back, police said.
Gunmen also shot dead Shaaban Abdel Kadhim, a local municipal representative for southern Baghdad's Al-Furat neighborhood, along with his two bodyguards yesterday. The three were killed while travelling in the car.
Police found the body of a 25-year-old woman, wearing an Islamic headscarf, who had been shot in the head. Her corpse was discovered in Baghdad's Al-Bayaa neighborhood. A man's body was found in the Kadhimiyah district.
Elsewhere in Baghdad, four civilians were wounded in a roadside bombing.
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