Iraqis taste freedom - but how much?

The amnesty brought emotional reunions

By Nick Pelham In Baghdad

Saddam Hussein kept his promise to reward his people for the referendum which gave him 100% of the vote.

As the guards pulled back the main gates at the Abu Ghuraib prison - hitherto a byword for Iraq's merciless rule - the waiting crowds ran amok.

One gate after another fell under the weight of their advance.

Some flung stones at the guards, who tried to beat back the crowds with army-issue belts.

Some prisoners were killed in the stampede

For the first day in decades, Iraqis tasted people power as the authorities freed what they claimed to be 13,000 inmates.

Later they said they had "stormed the Bastille".

Men on death row ran barefoot to freedom.

"I had three death sentences outstanding for murder," said a baffled burly man, who had spent two years in jail, as he bounced out of prison.

Behind they left cells strewn with sandals, broken eggs, and the upturned remains of rice bowls.

Saddam Hussein's aphorisms and image adorning the prison's windowless walls looked forlornly down at their absent audience.

Only in one corner of Abu Ghuraib did the gates not give way.

Political prisoners

At the Special Judgement Block, home to political prisoners, expectant relatives abandoned praise for Saddam Hussein, and asked God for help.

Inmates slowly filed out one by one: a Kurd who had fled military service, now spared six years of his seven year sentence; a Baghdadi businessman sentenced to life for counterfeiting Iraqi dinars; and a meek cartoonist, who had fled to Jordan to seek refugee status - only to find himself handed back to Iraq.

The empty cells were strewn with sandals, egg shells and rice bowls

His first request was for a pen.

He had shared his cell block with 15 other journalists, together with rebel army officers and former agents of the exiled opposition.

Pencils and books were not allowed.

At a mere whiff of political debate, he said, guards had you removed from prison to be tortured, or killed.

No one I talked to had been in prison for more than two years.

Trampled

There were so many emotions at play.

Whelps of joy merged with sobs of pain.

Human rights groups called the prison a death camp

In the main block, prisoners were killed in a stampede to get out before guards had unlocked the doors.

In their supposed hour of reunion, fathers and mothers raked through the dead.

The scene was at once funeral and festival.

Inside the walls of what human rights groups called a death camp, children banged tin trays, wives danced and grandmothers ululated.

From somewhere a minibus appeared with loudspeakers strung onto its roof, blaring Iraqi pop.

Hawkers arrived peddling Pepsi, and sweet cakes. So too did the beggars.

Out of work

Guards wondered anxiously about their career prospects.

We still have to clean up the cells, said one.

"Perhaps then we'll get a fresh intake," he added hopefully.

But then a departing inmate hugged him farewell and rushed to join the line of ex-prisoners hauling tin cases piled high with bedrolls, and in a few cases, televisions and fans.

Over the next two days, the line trod its way 30km (20 miles) to Baghdad - tangible proof to the capital that Saddam Hussein had kept his word.

Ministers and sycophants appeared on television saying the president had revealed his humanitarian face.

Iraqis said they had 'stormed the Bastille'

Tariq Aziz, a Christian and deputy prime minister, likened the Iraqi leader's capacity for forgiveness to Jesus.

Even, Saddam Hussein at his inauguration said the country was set on the road to freedom of expression.

Not all, are so certain.

Businessmen, already concerned at the increase in looting, welcome the release of political prisoners and army deserters.

But was it really necessary, they ask, to pardon murderers and paedophiles too?

Are all now repentant? At the very least, if the intention was to rally the people to the president's side ahead of an expected US attack, freeing the country's foes seems a fantastically high-risk way to do it.

Couldn't this simply backfire?

And for every family that celebrated the return of their loved ones, there were several who remained in mourning.

Stage-managed?

In the tenement blocks of the Saddam City slums, families lay grieving over photos of the missing as their next-door-neighbours fired celebratory gunshots into the air.

Two days after the opening of Abu Ghuraib's gates, a few dozen mothers had the nerve to gather outside the government press office, home to the bureaus of the international media, to do something Iraqis never do: protest.

Where they asked were their disappeared?

Incredibly, the information ministry promised to investigate.

Mildly, they persuaded the crowd to leave.

The protesters returned two hours after guards sent them away

The guards were so gentle that the mothers returned two hours later to resume their protest.

When the guards again tried to disperse them, the crowd briefly stood its ground by chanting praise to the leader.

The demonstration ended peacefully.

It could all be stage-managed.

After all, this is a country where a husband does not pillow-talk to his wife for fear she will betray him if they get divorced.

No one can organise except the authorities and the ruling party.

Some one must have given a green light for the rally.

So penetrating is the televised presence of the leader that after just five days in the country, I woke up to find that I was chanting his name like a heartbeat: Saddam, Saddam, Saddam.

Floodgates

What better way to stave off external demands of regime-change than to persuade the world you can regime-change yourself?

But no one visiting Iraq can recall a time when Iraqis so openly expressed their opposition to the authorities as they are today.

Shopkeepers confess that despite the official 100% turnout, they did not vote.

There is no figure for the numbers of missing, but these names are just the tip of an iceberg.

Diplomats muse about opening the floodgates.

And once the authorities allow these protests - fabricated or not - to proceed, the cries to hear the regime utter more mea culpas could be endless.