Command Post: "Horrors of Iraqi Jails
Wednesday was the day for killing and Thursday was the day relatives paid to collect the bodies of the dead. How prisoners were executed depended on an order from above â?? a bullet to the back of the head for those deemed to deserve a degree of mercy and the rope for those destined to suffer. On the morning of their deaths, prisoners were asked their permission to be killed: those who agreed first received a glass of water and a brief reading of verses from the Koran while those who said no went straight to the hangman's noose. These were the workings of the notorious Abu Ghurayb prison, a sprawling complex of barred cells, razor wire and watch towers 20 miles west of Baghdad and, at various times during Saddam Hussein's rule, home for up to 75,000 prisoners."
