In the first week of a special program during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, the U.S. military released 260 Iraqi detainees from U.S. prisons, the military said Wednesday, compelling each to take a pledge before an Iraqi judge not to engage in misconduct and requiring a family member or a friend to act as a guarantor who would face sanctions if the pledge is broken.

The initiative “is designed to deter detainees from engaging in misconduct after their release,” said a military statement released Sept. 13, at the start of the program.

The released detainees “are tracked, and if they act outside the law, they are turned over to the Iraqi judicial system,” Rear Adm. Mark Fox, a U.S. military spokesman, told reporters.

in Baghdad last week.

The Ramadan program is part of a joint U.S.-Iraqi venture called Lion’s Paw, and it is intended to step up the normally slow pace of detainee releases, to between 50 and 80 Iraqis per day, until the holy month ends Oct. 13, according to the military announcement.

Marine Maj. Gen. Douglas Stone, commander of U.S. detainee operations in Iraq, told bloggers in a roundtable Tuesday that the United States currently holds 25,000 Iraqis in detention facilities in Iraq, and as the U.S. counteroffensive strategy continues, an additional 15,000 could be brought in. He said more than 80 percent of the detainees are Sunnis, although the number of Shiites is rising “because of the major push here in the Shia parts of Baghdad.” Stone also said that “we’re seeing about 25 percent (of the detainees) right now that probably are okay to be released.”

Stone said earlier this month that the selection of detainees for release will be open to all who qualify. “This will be a completely nonsectarian, non-political process,” he said.

Stone emphasized that the program was developed in conjunction with Iraq’s Sunni vice president, Tariq al-Hashimi. Stone said Hashimi has attended some of the daily “pledging guarantor ceremonies” and has given speeches to those being released.

In describing the impact of the release program, Stone told the bloggers that during Monday’s ceremony, “we had a mother so overjoyed she fainted.” Detainees offered release, he added, became “just over-ecstatic that they get to make a choice” of which gate to use to depart.

The Ramadan release initiative is one of many programs that Stone has instituted since he took over control of the detainee system. He has introduced moderate Islamic clerics to teach “religious enlightenment” and has launched other education programs for the detainees, some of whom are as young as 11. He describes it as part of waging war in “the battlefield of the mind” in Iraq.

Stone told the bloggers that since he took over, he has released very few detainees up to now, and he believes that has been a factor in restraining Sunni violence. “I’m not out here, you know, for social work. … We’re out here because war is an act of force, and we’re going to compel this enemy to do our will.”

As for religious extremists, who appear to be at the root of Sunni and Shiite opposition to the U.S. presence, Stone said: “Our will is that the moderates are going to win out. And so everybody that’s in my detention is either going to go out doing that, because that’s what our will is, or they’re not going out.”

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Greenwell reported from Baghdad.

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