Tears of joy and hope flowed in Indonesia as authorities freed more than 1,400 rebel Acehnese prisoners detained around the country, meeting a key condition of an historic peace pact.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono signed a decree late Tuesday granting the amnesty to members of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), as required under the August 15 peace accord between the government and the Aceh fighters.

At a state prison in Jantho near the provincial capital Banda Aceh, 58 inmates were released to waiting families, who hugged them fiercely amid tears.

Others had no families to greet them, such as 40-year-old Kardiman, who lost his relatives to last December's horrific tsunami that ravaged the coast of Aceh. He also had no home to return to.

"Now I'm alone. My house is gone and my two children and wife died in the tsunami," he told AFP, adding however that he was looking ahead to starting a small business.

District secretary Muhammad Dahlan presided over a ceremony marking the release at the prison.

"From today on, there is no more GAM. We are all only peace-loving Acehnese," Dahlan told the detainees.

The peace deal, spurred on due to the devastation wreaked by the tsunami, aims to end almost three decades of separatist conflict in resource-rich and staunchly Muslim Aceh which has claimed some 15,000 lives, mostly civilians.

Families at Banda Aceh airport waited anxiously for news of relatives.

A sobbing Yunidar Arabia told Metro TV that she was looking for her father, a wood trader who was taken away by Indonesia's paramilitary force in 2003 and presumed dead.

"I was just told this morning that he may return today," she said.

"I am glad, I am happy, but at the same time I am sad because mother is no longer there," she said, adding she lost her mother, grandfather and a younger sibling in the tsunami which killed 131,000 people in the province.

"I just wish that there are no longer any shots fired in Aceh."

Four of GAM's most senior members in the country, who were released from Bandung jail, arrived back home in Aceh by plane.

The four -- Teuku Kamaruzzaman, Amni bin Ahmad Marzuki, Nashiruddin bin Ahmed and Muhammad bin Usman Lampoh Awe -- were arrested for treason in 2003 when they were about to fly to Tokyo to attend an emergency meeting to salvage a peace pact signed in December 2002 that eventually crumbled.

Rebels had been moved to jails around the country in a government policy designed to break up their networks.

Aceh provincial secretary Tantawi Ishak told returning rebels at the airport that he hoped the region could now rebuild properly.

"We hope that this peace accord can truly create a long-lasting peace between the Indonesian government, the Free Aceh Movement and Acehnese," he said.

The amnesty, which under the peace deal had to be granted to prisoners by Wednesday at the latest, was granted to all GAM members. Members convicted of crimes unrelated to the separatist movement are not eligible.

The peace agreement, signed in Finland after six months of largely secret negotiations, saw GAM drop its long-held demand for independence for a form of local self-government and agree to disarm and demobilize its fighters.

Indonesia promised in return to withdraw its non-local security forces by the end of the year and allow the creation of political parties in Aceh.

PHOTO CAPTION

Indonesian military keeps an eye on a line of Free Aceh movement members after they arrived at Banda Aceh airport, after being released from jail on the island of Java. (AFP)