The employees of the Interior and Defense ministries who were arrested earlier this week were released on Friday at the insistence of Interior Minister Jawad al-Bulani, who just returned from abroad. He appears to have seen the arrests as a strike at him and his ministry.
Muntazir al-Zaydi, the journalist who shoebushed the US president, will press charges against the people he said beat him when he was taken into custody. Iraqis in several cities have continued to stage protests over al-Zaidi’s imprisonment and prosecution.
The Iraqi government rejected the attempt by the provincial council in Ninevah to post pone the provincial election in that province.