U.S. Resident Freed From Baghdad Prison

[Rose Siding]

An Iraqi-born U.S. resident was released from a U.S. military prison in Baghdad yesterday, two days before a scheduled hearing on why the U.S. government had continued to detain him after clearing him of involvement in a mortar attack.

The government's decision to free Numan Adnan Al-Kaby comes less than a week after lawyers filed suit demanding his release. A federal judge had scheduled a hearing on Al-Kaby's case for Thursday afternoon, but the government yesterday asked that it be canceled and the complaint be dismissed as moot.

Al-Kaby was arrested in April in Baghdad after a mortar attack on U.S. forces, but in July a military tribunal concluded he was not involved and recommended his release. In court papers filed yesterday, Justice Department lawyers acknowledged that Al-Kaby had been declared not guilty, but they said the military received additional information shortly after that decision and completed its investigation on Sept. 2 -- two days after Al-Kaby's lawsuit was filed. Officials formally concluded he could be released to his family in Iraq yesterday.

Al-Kaby was a neighbor in prison of Cyrus Kar, an Iranian American filmmaker who was arrested in May on suspicion that he was involved in a terrorist plot. Like Al-Kaby, Kar was cleared by a military panel and recommended for release but remained in jail until days after his family filed suit in July.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/06/AR2005090601599.html