In Baghdad, 44 prisoners were released from an Iraqi National Guard base in the western Ameriyah district in the presence of a tribal leader who acted as their guarantor.
A big black bus pulled into the base as Sheikh Hisham al-Dulaimi and other Sunni Muslim tribal elders lined up to greet them.
"Long live Fallujah!" shouted Ahmed Kurdi, 21, from the bus, hailing the Sunni insurgents' bastion, west of the capital.
Kurdi said he was held in Baghdad's notorious Abu Gharib prison with his brother for 45 days after they were arrested by US troops at their home in Ameriyah. Kurdi has two other brothers in jail, one of whom has been held for nine months in Camp Bucca, outside the southern port city of Umm Qasr. Dressed in a red football shirt and still wearing a white prison tag around his wrist, Kurdi said he still does not know why he was arrested.
Neither does Mahmoud Dia, 17, who was arrested in the southern city of Nasiriyah and held for 15 months in Abu Gharib.
"I am not with the insurgents and do not even own a weapon, they just me picked up from the street like that," he said.
A young man wearing a baseball cap with a string of green worry beads around his neck interrupts to recount "the injustice he was subjected to."
Geoffrey Miller, deputy commanding general for detainee operations and the US military commander charged with cleaning up Abu Gharib, is seeking to speed up their trials.
He has said that starting from late July, the board reviewing the status of detainees will include six representatives of the caretaker government in addition to the existing three military officers.