Fly-posters still litter the walls bearing all manner of decrees from insurgent commanders, to be heeded on pain of death.
Amid the rubble of the main shopping street that cuts through the city center, one decree bearing the insurgents' insignia - two Kalashnikovs propped together - and dated November 1 gives vendors three days to remove nine market stalls from outside the city's library or face execution.
The pretext given is that the rebels wanted to convert the building into a headquarters for the mujahideen Advisory Council through which they ran the city.
Another poster in the ruins of the souk bears testament to the strict brand of Sunni Islam imposed by the council, fronted by hardline cleric Abdullah Junabi.
The decree warns all women that they must cover up from head to toe outdoors, or face execution by the armed militants who controlled the streets.
Two female bodies, found on Sunday, suggest such threats were far from idle.
An Arab woman, in a violet nightdress, lay in a post-mortem embrace with a male corpse in the middle of the street. Both bodies had bullets to heads turned swollen and pulpy.
Just six meters (yards) away on the same street lay the decomposing torso of a blonde-haired white woman, too disfigured for swift identification but presumed to be the body of one of the many foreign hostages kidnapped by the rebels.
Such is the fear that the heavily-armed militants held over Fallujah that many of the residents who emerged from the ruins welcomed the US Marines, despite the massive destruction their firepower had inflicted on their city.
A man, in his sixties, half-naked, his underwear stained with blood from shrapnel wounds from a US munition, cursed the insurgents as he greeted the advancing marines on Saturday night.
"I wish the Americans had come here the very first day and not waited eight months," he said as he trembled in the doorway of a mosque courtyard used as a weapons store by the militants.
Another elderly man, who did not want his name used for fear the rebels would one day return and restore their draconian rule, said he was detained by the militants on November 9 and held for four days before being freed.
He described how he had then sought refuge in a friend's house where they had huddled together clutching Korans in silent prayer for their lives as the massive US bombardment put the insurgents to flight.
"It was horrible," he told an AFP correspondent embedded with the unit, adding, "We suffered from the bombings. Innocent people died or were wounded by the bombings."
But despite the days and nights of horror, he insisted he was still glad to see the back of the militants.
"We were happy you did what you did because Fallujah had been suffocated by the mujahideen [holy warriors]," he confided.
"Anyone considered suspicious would be slaughtered. We would see corpses around the city all the time."
The same story of arbitrary executions of suspected collaborators or blasphemers was told by another resident, found by US troops cowering in his home with his brother and his family.
"We were scared of the mujahideen, we were frightened of them," confided Ayad Assam, 24.
"They would wear black masks, carry rocket-propelled grenades and Kalashnikovs, and search streets and alleys.
"They made checkpoints on the roads. They put announcements on walls banning music and telling women to wear the full veil."
It was not just peddlers of alcohol or Western videos and women deemed improperly dressed that faced the militants' wrath.
Even residents who regard themselves as observant Muslims lived in fear because they did not share the puritan brand of Sunni Islam that the insurgents enforced.
One devotee of a Sufi sect, followers of a mystical form of worship deemed heretical by the hardliners, told how he and other members of his order had lived in terror inside their homes for fear of retribution.
"It was a very hard life. We couldn't move. We could not work," said the man sporting the white robe and skullcap prescribed by his faith.
© 2004 Agence France-Presse