(Adds details) By Dean Yates BAGHDAD, April 14 (Reuters) - The U.S. military said on Monday it would free a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer working for the Associated Press who has been held in custody in Iraq for two years. It said Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi, would be freed on Wednesday after an Iraqi judicial panel dismissed the last remaining criminal allegation against him and ordered him released under an amnesty law passed by parliament in February. The U.S. military had accused Hussein, 36, of working with insurgents in Iraq. AP has repeatedly denied any improper links and said Hussein was only doing his job as a journalist. "After the action by the Iraqi judicial committees, we reviewed the circumstances of Hussein's detention and determined that he no longer presents an imperative threat to security," Major-General Douglas Stone, head of the U.S. military's detainee operations in Iraq, said in a statement. "I have therefore ordered that he be released from coalition force custody." AP President Tom Curley expressed relief. "In time we will celebrate Bilal's release. For now, we want him safe and united with his family," the agency quoted Curley as saying. "While we may never see eye to eye with the U.S. military over this case, it is time for all of us to move on." Hussein was seized in Ramadi, capital of western Anbar province in April 2006, at a time when a Sunni Arab insurgency was raging in the vast desert region. He was part of the AP's photo team that won a Pulitzer prize in 2005. The military statement said Hussein was alleged to have possessed bomb-making materials and conspired with insurgents to photograph explosions directed at security forces. Hussein was not being exonerated of any wrongdoing, it added. The Iraqi judicial panel had dismissed two separate accusations against Hussein in the past week. "A finding that amnesty applies is not an acquittal, but a determination that the alleged misconduct, whether proved or not, will be excused by the Government of Iraq in order to serve the purposes of the Amnesty Law," the military said. Many of the 23,000 detainees in U.S. military custody in Iraq have not been charged but remain in jail because they are deemed a security risk. Hussein is just one of several Iraqi journalists who have been held by the U.S. military without facing trial. Reuters journalists have also been detained by the U.S. military for months and later released without charges. (Editing by Ibon Villelabeitia)
Iraq's Foreign Affairs minister Hoshiyar Zebari gestures as he speaks during an interview with Reuters in Baghdad April 13, 2008. REUTERS/Mahmoud Raouf Mahmoud (IRAQ) ...
