Ali Khadim must have a very good interview technique.A handwritten note on the cover of an Iraqi Security Organisation file read, "After a week of interrogation we recommend Ali Khadim for the job."
The file contained a picture of Khadim, his age and address, a list of his qualifications, including a degree in law from Basra university, and reference to "his good intentions to the Baath Party". There was only one negative comment. "After special probing" - a euphemism, it seems, for torture - "we discovered that Khadim is only 50 per cent loyal to the party. But we believe with training this can be improved to 85 per cent."
After the interview from hell it turned out that all Khadim had been after was a job as a night watchman at the local port.
At the bombed-out offices of the Iraqi Security Organisation complex in Basra, it was not the instruments of terror contained inside that shocked but the banality of their ends.
Beneath a meat hook in the ceiling of one cell, used to truss "interviewees", Khadim's file lay among hundreds of similar testimonies to the mindless efficacy of the Iraqi regime.
One file recorded the marriage application of a security service member to a woman who had not joined the Baath Party. A note read: "We are very worried about Ranan Jawad. We believe she may be unsuitable but only interrogation will tell."
Another described how a policeman had appeared less than fully enthusiastic at the mention of Saddam Hussein's name: "We have him under 24-hour surveillance. He spends a long time in the bathroom each morning. Be wary of him."
Although the structure of the main ISO building still stood intact, its contents of scattered paperwork and blunt instruments had largely been untouched by the crowds of looters outside.
Perhaps a sign painted on one of its walls explained why. "The head of the snake is still poisonous even when it is cut off," it read - an epitaph to both the terror felt by ordinary Iraqis of the activities that went on inside the building, and to the fear felt by the regime itself of the people it tried to control.
At a nearby Fedayeen headquarters, Saddam's equivalent of the Hitler youth movement, where young party adherents came to revel in the brutality of the regime, people had also come to mutely stare.
In the back room of the security office, with its customary meat hook hanging from the ceiling, empty boxes of "Party ties" stood beside a long-bladed knife. "Now that clearly wasn't used to cut tomatoes," said a British soldier.
Mr Najir Mohammed, who had come to relive his experience inside the building, demonstrated what such knives were used for: half of his right ear had been cut off. "After the first Gulf War I ran away from the army but the Fedayeen caught me," he said. "When I refused to join again they cut off my ear.
"There are many like me, we could not get jobs and no one would talk to us. But now that has changed." He pointed to his head that was heavily bandaged where he had been struck by shrapnel from an allied bombing mission.
"My family tells me I am unlucky, but I don't mind," he added cheerfully. "Because this is one injury I shall be proud to wear. It means I am now free."