Lawyer Says Military Agrees to Release U.S. Filmmaker From Custody in Iraq

LOS ANGELES (AP) - The U.S. military has agreed to release an aspiring American filmmaker who had been detained in Iraq since May, when potential bomb parts were found in a taxi he was riding in, his lawyer said Saturday.

Cyrus Kar's family had filed a lawsuit accusing the federal government of violating the 44-year-old's civil rights when it continued to hold him after the FBI cleared him of suspicion.

A hearing had been scheduled Monday, but the family's attorney, Mark Rosenbaum, said Saturday that the military had agreed to release Kar and his Iranian cameraman, Farshid Faraji, from a military jail in Baghdad.

He said State Department officials informed him Saturday that Kar would be released.

"They didn't explain either why he's been detained after he passed a lie detector test and cleared by the FBI, nor did they explain why he was to be released," said Rosenbaum, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.