U.S. forces release 16 Fallujan detainees

ANBAR / IraqiNews.com: Sixteen people of the city of Falluja who were detained by U.S. forces in Bocca prison were released on Friday after they were verified to have no links with armed groups, a police source in the city said. “The released Fallujans, who had been handed over by U.S. forces to the police department on Friday, were distributed to their dwelling places in the city’s districts,” the source told IraqiNews.com. The U.S. forces have released about 200 Fallujan detainees since early October 2008, including 47 this month. Harith al-Obaidi, a member of the Iraqi parliament’s human rights committee, had told IraqiNews.com that the U.S. forces are detaining 16,000 Iraqis in Basra-based Bocca, the largest U.S. detention facility. The U.S. forces have two main detention centers in Iraq: Krupper, or the airport prison, which lies beyond the U.S. base in Baghdad Airport, in the western part of the city, and Bocca in the southern Iraq oil-rich port city of Basra. Falluja, the largest city in the predominantly Sunni province of al-Anbar, lies 45 km west of the Iraqi capital. The province’s capital city is Ramadi, 110 km west of Baghdad. AmR (P) 1