U.S. forces release AP photographer in Iraq after 2 yrs

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer working for the Associated Press in Iraq was freed from U.S. military custody on Wednesday after being held without charge for two years, the news agency said.

Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi, was handed over to AP colleagues at a checkpoint in Baghdad. He was smiling and appeared in good health, AP said in a report from the Iraqi capital.

"I want to thank all the people working in AP ... I have spent two years in prison even though I was innocent. I thank everybody," Hussein said after being freed.

The U.S. military had accused Hussein of working with insurgents in Iraq. AP has repeatedly denied any improper links and said Hussein was only doing his job as a journalist. No formal charges were ever filed, the agency said.

Hussein, 36, was freed after the U.S. military conducted a review of his status and decided he was no longer a security threat. That followed a decision by an Iraqi judicial panel that dismissed allegations against Hussein and ordered him released under an amnesty law passed by parliament in February.

He was taken to the checkpoint aboard a prisoner bus and left U.S. custody wearing a traditional Iraqi robe, the AP said.

The photographer was embraced by family members, including his brother and mother, after his release, and received flowers.

AP executives welcomed the news of Hussein's release.

"After two years and four days of captivity, Bilal Hussein is back with the AP," Thomas Curley, president and chief executive of the news organization, told a gathering of U.S. newspaper editors and executives in Washington.

Hussein was seized in Ramadi, capital of the westerly Anbar province, in April 2006 at a time when a Sunni Arab insurgency was raging in the region. He was part of the AP photo team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2005.

NO FURTHER LEGAL ACTION

In a statement on Monday announcing he would be freed, the U.S. military said Hussein was suspected of having possessed bomb-making materials and conspired with insurgents to photograph blasts aimed at security forces. It said he was not being exonerated.

But U.S. military spokesman Major-General Kevin Bergner told a news conference in Baghdad he was not aware of any intention to pursue further legal action against Hussein.

In December, military authorities brought Hussein's case into the Iraqi court system for possible trial, but did not file specific charges, the AP said.

The Iraqi judicial panel dismissed two separate accusations against Hussein this month.

Many of the 23,000 detainees in U.S. military custody in Iraq have not been formally charged but remain in jail because the military considers them a security risk.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, a press freedom watchdog, welcomed Hussein's release but criticized the U.S. military practice of holding journalists without charge in war zones for prolonged periods.

"It basically allows the U.S. military to remove journalists from the field, lock them up, and never be compelled to say why," CPJ executive director Joel Simon said in a statement.

Reuters journalists have been detained by the U.S. military for months in Iraq and later freed without charges being filed.

(Additional reporting by Howard Goller in Washington and Michelle Nichols in New York; Writing by Dean Yates; Editing by Mary Gabriel)