A Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer working for the Associated Press in Iraq has been freed from US military custody after being held without charge for two years.
Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi, was handed over to AP colleagues at a checkpoint in Baghdad.
He was smiling and appeared in good health, AP said in a report from the Iraqi capital.
Mr Hussein thanked his colleagues at AP and said that he had spent two years in prison even though he was innocent.
The US military had accused Mr Hussein of working with insurgents in Iraq.
AP has repeatedly denied any improper links and said Mr Hussein was only doing his job as a journalist.
No formal charges were ever filed, the agency said.
The 36-year-old was freed after the US military conducted a review of his status and decided he was no longer a security threat.
That followed a decision by an Iraqi judicial panel that dismissed allegations against Mr Hussein and ordered him released under an amnesty law passed by parliament in February.
On his release at the checkpoint, the photographer was embraced by family members, including his brother and mother and received flowers.
Mr Hussein was seized in Ramadi, capital of the westerly Anbar province, in April 2006, at a time when a Sunni Arab insurgency was raging in the region.
He was part of the AP photo team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2005.
In a statement on Monday announcing that he would be freed, the US military said Mr Hussein was suspected of having possessed bomb-making materials and conspired with insurgents to photograph blasts aimed at security forces.
It said he was not being exonerated.
But US military spokesman Major-General Kevin Bergner told a news conference in Baghdad he was not aware of any intention to pursue further legal action against Mr Hussein.
Many of the 23,000 detainees in US military custody in Iraq have not been formally charged but remain in jail because the military considers them a security risk.
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, a press freedom watchdog, welcomed Mr Hussein's release but criticised the US military practice of holding journalists without charge in war zones for prolonged periods.
It said it allows the US military to remove journalists from the field, lock them up, and never be compelled to say why.
