Many said they did not know why they had been picked up. Others complained they had been treated badly. One claimed he had been ordered to clean his tent using only a toothbrush.

"They treated everyone badly at Abu Ghraib. Sometimes they put the detainees on the ground and put their shoes on people's heads," said Dr Abdulwadood Ahmed, a physical education teacher at Tikrit University.

He said he had been picked up by the US ten months ago and accused of possessing weapons, being a member of Saddam's Fedayeen militia and attacking coalition forces.

During his time behind bars, he was shuttled between Camp Bucca in southern Iraq and Abu Ghraib, where he said conditions were far worse.

Asked what he thought about the Americans, he gestured to the soldiers checking off names and then shook his head.

Ahmed was one of about 60 who had just arrived in a convoy headed by a couple of Army Humvees after a short journey of a couple of miles (three kilometers) from Abu Ghraib to a base of the paramilitary Iraqi Civil Defence Corps (ICDC) here.