454 Iraqis Return Home After Being Held in Infamous Prison

The U.S. military on Friday released 454 Iraqis from the Abu Ghraib prison, the center of a scandal involving American mistreatment of detainees.

A convoy of at least six buses, accompanied by U.S. troops in armored vehicles and jeeps, took the prisoners from the facility on Baghdad’s western outskirts to Tikrit and Baqubah, north of the capital. Some also were returned to Ramadi and Baghdad.

Early today, the military announced that a roadside bomb had killed one U.S. soldier and wounded three in Mahmoudiya, south of Baghdad. It also said a Marine had died in a “nonhostile” incident Friday near Fallouja, but gave no details. Neither was identified.

In Baqubah, two busloads of detainees were handed over to local Iraqi police and released soon afterward. The freed prisoners kissed the ground and knelt to pray after walking out of the police compound.

Abdul Salam Hussain Jassim, 18, said he was rounded up with others after an explosion in a Baqubah street and held for three months.

He said that one man among five brothers and sisters who were detained was beaten so badly he died two days later. The story could not be confirmed.

On the same day the Iraqis left the prison, the last Spanish troops left Iraq and crossed the border into Kuwait.

A Spanish radio journalist reporting on the pullout, Fran Sevilla, was freed unharmed Friday after being held in the Iraqi city of Najaf for a few hours by Shiite Muslim fighters loyal to cleric Muqtada Sadr, state radio said.

The pullout fulfills an election pledge by new Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.

In Baghdad, meanwhile, a U.S. military spokesman said that coalition forces had detained four suspects in the killing of American contractor Nicholas Berg, and that two of them were later released.

The suspects were detained Wednesday, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said.

On another subject, Kimmitt said the military was investigating reports that a U.S. airstrike Wednesday killed 40 wedding guests.