Some of those very women have been out demonstrating in Mosul this week, as pictured below.
For those who do not read arabic (myself included) here is the reason for the march.
US Frees Iraqi Woman Detainees After Protests
MOSUL, June 19, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) – US occupation forces completed on Sunday, June 19, the release of twenty one Iraqi women held as a bargain chip in the northern city of Mosul.
"The release came after massive protests organized by the Islamic Party and the Islamic organization for human rights over the past three days," Nour Al-Din Al-Hayalli, the Islamic Party's media officer in Mosul, told IslamOnline.net.
The Islamic party championed a massive demonstration following the Friday prayers on June 17 to press for the immediate release of all Iraqi women in the US custody.
Assembling outside the Sedek Rashan mosque, protestors denounced the American occupation for dishonoring the Iraqi people by detaining women.
They carried photos of detained women, demanding the government of Ibrahim Jaafari to live up to its responsibilities toward the Iraqi people.
The demonstrators also issued a statement calling for an immediate release of all Iraqi women detainees across the occupied country.
There is no available figures on Iraqi women in the custody of American occupation forces
And why are they arrested?
In a demonstration staged on Thursday, June 16, an Iraqi woman said her daughter-in-law was detained by US soldiers after they failed to find her husband.
"They stormed the house on May 24, searching for my son. When they failed to find him they detained his wife and threw his six-month-old child to the ground," she recalled
Now I'm not an expert in military tactics (I just play one on the internet), but could one of the pro-war people who regularly pop in here tell me how they justify this?
update
For those who may be ready to dismiss these reports as propaganda due to the source, a further article from the WP reveals that it was standard practice as far back as 2003.
"It is a practice in some U.S. units to detain family members of anti-coalition suspects in an effort to induce the suspects to turn themselves in, in exchange for the release of their family members,"
