SADDAM Hussein is likely to be hanged in the jail where prisoners were tortured and killed under his regime.

The 70-year-old former tyrant will be executed within days at Abu Ghraib, outside Baghdad.

The grey-walled complex once held 15,000 political prisoners.

Many were used as guinea pigs in chemical weapons tests.

Saddam will probably be killed in the next few days to avoid a build-up of tension in Iraq.

He will be hanged as a common criminal rather than facing a firing squad as he would have preferred.

That final indignity comes after the court that convicted him of crimes against humanity ruled that he never completed his military training.

Iraq is in the grip of near civil war and authorities are bracing themselves for a wave of violence after the hanging.

A security source in Baghdad said: “Abu Ghraib is the place where it was always planned for Saddam to be executed.

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