Saddam frees thousands of political prisoners
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Your support makes all the difference.Iraq started to release thousands of political prisoners yesterday under an unprecedented and unconditional amnesty announced by President Saddam Hussein in an effort to defuse hostility to his regime at home and abroad.
Prisoners, some of whom may have been held in unlit underground cells for as long as 20 years, were freed in Baghdad and other cities chanting: "With our blood and souls we redeem you Saddam."
Iraq has some 300 prisons and places of detention where executions and torture are common.
The Iraqi leader has officially declared the amnesty to mark his triumph in the referendum last week in which he won 100 per cent of the vote. He said: "We are shifting the responsibility for reforming them [the prisoners] to their families and society. We ask God that we will not regret this decision."
The amnesty shows that he intends to make all possible concessions to avert a military assault by the US. This may bode well for the UN weapons inspectors who have demanded total access in Iraq.
The US Secretary of State Colin Powell, who has spoken of "regime change" in Iraq for at least 18 months, appeared to soften his position yesterday. The US might not seek to remove Saddam Hussein if he abandoned his weapons of mass destruction, he said.
The amnesty covers all political and non-political prisoners, the only exceptions being murderers, who will have to arrange blood-money payments to their victims' families, and thieves, who will have to repay what they stole.
Iraq has some of the most horrific prisons in the world. When the Kurds captured a prison in the city of Suleimaniyah after the Gulf War, they found a medieval warren of torture chambers, equipped with metal hooks and other devices smeared with blood.
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