US frees scores from Abu Ghraib prison

The US military has released more than 100 prisoners from Abu Ghraib jail, which has been renamed Baghdad Central Prison, Iraqi officials said yesterday.
The human rights ministry told AFP the 107 Iraqis were freed from the prison in west Baghdad on Wednesday under the US-Iraqi security pact that calls for American soldiers to withdraw from Iraq by the end of 2011.
A series of releases started on February 3 as a key part of the deal signed in November that provides for a gradual return of Iraqi sovereignty and a handover of security responsibilities.
Under the agreement, prisoners must either be set free or handed over to the Iraqi authorities.
Detainees are being released "who the US and the government of Iraq think no longer pose a threat to the security or stability of Iraq," US Brigadier General David Quantock, who is charge of the prisoners, said last week.
The US-led coalition currently has about 15,000 prisoners in custody after six years of insurgency and sectarian warfare since the March 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein from power.
Meanwhile, four Iraqi policemen were killed in a car bombing in Mosul yesterday, police said, the day after a string of deadly attacks in the restive northern city.
A spokesman for a a Sunni political party was also killed by armed men close to his house near his home in Mosul, a hotbed of insurgents and ethnic tensions.