BAGHDAD — Abed al-Hassan Jabar used to be an engineer and lieutenant colonel in Saddam Hussein’s army. Today he makes $7 a day while getting vocational training in the hopes of finding employment.

Jabar is one of thousands of former U.S. detainees who have entered vocational programs aimed at reeducating former militants and giving them job skills.

Like many former detainees, he says he did nothing wrong. He used to own an electrical appliance shop and blames rival business owners for spreading false information that led to his arrest.

Whatever the reality, Jabar was scooped up by U.S. forces and spent 15 months in detention at Camp Cropper. He says it’s a struggle to find work bearing the stigma of being a former prisoner.

"When I got out I had no job, nobody supported me," he said.

At one point there were as many as 26,000 detainees in U.S. custody, a number that has dropped to about 12,000. The United States is releasing a steady stream of detainees to comply with a security agreement with the Iraqi government that calls for all detainees to be transferred to Iraqi control. The United States has pledged to release 1,500 detainees a month until American-operated prisons are empty.

Both countries are keen to keep the detainees employed, and the United States has helped fund programs like Jabar’s across the country.

Jabar is now in the midst of a 45-day training program along with 59 other detainees on the edge of the Shiite slum of Sadr City, stronghold of the Mahdi Army militia, which once fought fierce battles with U.S. troops.

In addition to requiring participants to renounce violence the course offers classes in computers, hair-cutting, sewing and other trades.

"We teach them to lead new lives," said Sheik Katim al-Karayshi, who oversees the program. "After 45 days he (the student) can use a computer and find any job he wants."

But the reality is that even skilled workers find it difficult to find jobs in Iraq. Capt. Brian Butler said he’s glad the former detainees are getting training but is concerned about the follow-through of the program. Al-Karayshi says he has not lined up jobs for his students but plans to secure them small business grants.

"Will they all start their own business?" Butler questions.

It’s impossible to say how many former detainees were insurgents and how many were victims of circumstance, but there were almost certainly innocents swept up in the more volatile days of the war, when a report from a neighbor could get you arrested.

"A lot of guys hate Americans now because they didn’t do anything and they were arrested," Jabar said. "This helps heal that."

Another student, Karim Mutar Abed Sade, says he spent 15 months at the Camp Bucca prison after being caught without identification at a checkpoint.

"I lost this year from my life. I didn’t see my kids, didn’t see my family," he said.

The father of four says finding a job is a struggle, but he is happy to have the training program. He says he has buried bitterness he once felt toward Americans. "I feel like I’m reborn (since being released)," he said.