Survey: Saddam Killed 61,000 in Baghdad

Associated Press ^ | 12/08/03 | NIKO PRICE

[TexKat]

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Saddam Hussein's government may have executed 61,000 Baghdad residents, a number significantly higher than previously believed, according to a survey obtained Monday by The Associated Press.

The bloodiest massacres of Saddam's 23-year presidency occurred in Iraq's Kurdish north and Shiite Muslim south, but the Gallup Baghdad Survey data indicates the brutality extended strongly into the capital as well.

The survey, which the polling firm planned to release on Tuesday, asked 1,178 Baghdad residents in August and September whether a member of their household had been executed by Saddam's regime. According to Gallup, 6.6 percent said yes.

The polling firm took metropolitan Baghdad's population — 6.39 million — and average household size — 6.9 people — to calculate that 61,000 people were executed during Saddam's rule. Most are believed to have been buried in mass graves.

The U.S.-led occupation authority in Iraq has said that at least 300,000 people are buried in mass graves in Iraq. Human rights officials put the number closer to 500,000, and some Iraqi political parties estimate more than 1 million were executed.

Without exhumations of those graves, it is impossible to confirm a figure. Scientists told The Associated Press during a recent investigation that they have confirmed 41 mass graves on a list of suspected sites that currently includes 270 locations.

Forensic teams will begin to exhume four of those graves next month in search of evidence for a new tribunal, expected to be established this week, that will try members of the former regime for crimes against humanity and genocide. More graves will later be added to the list.

But nobody expects all the mass graves to be exhumed, and nobody expects to ever know the full number of Iraqis executed by their government.

Richard Burkholder, who headed Gallup's Baghdad team, said the numbers in Baghdad could be high for two reasons: People may have understood "household" to be broader than just the people living at their address; and some families may have moved to the capital from other areas since the executions occurred.

"Anecdotal accounts start to support it, but they don't get you to 60,000," he said in a telephone interview from Princeton, N.J.

Even reducing the numbers slightly because of those possibilities, however, Burkholder said the number of executions the data suggest is higher than previously estimated, in the low tens of thousands.

The deadliest atrocity associated with Saddam's government was the scorched-earth campaign known as the "Anfal," in which the government killed an estimated 180,000 Kurds in Iraq's far north. Many were buried in mass graves far from home in the southern desert.

Another 60,000 people are believed to have been killed when Saddam violently suppressed rebellions by Shiite Muslims in the south and Kurds in the north at the close of the 1991 Gulf War (news - web sites).

Sandra Hodgkinson, director of the U.S.-led occupation authority's human rights office, estimated that some 50,000 others were executed during Saddam's reign, including Kurds killed in chemical attacks and political prisoners sent to execution.

That 50,000 figure also would include prisoners killed in Baghdad.

The survey, which had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, was conducted in face-to-face interviews in Baghdad residents' homes from Aug. 28 and Sept. 4.

The people were selected at random from all geographic sectors of the Baghdad metropolitan area, and more than nine in 10 agreed to participate. That's at least double the response rate for many U.S. telephone polls.

___

Niko Price is correspondent-at-large for The Associated Press.

[TexKat]

Saddam & company = Butchers of Baghdad

[TexKat]

Ping

[finnman69]

if its half the amount its far more than were executed in kosovo

[theDentist]

a number significantly higher than previously believed

Really? I thought it was a number significantly lower than previously believed. And I have no doubt it'll be doubled in no time.

[leadpencil1]

But this can't happen in the modern world. Must be a mistake.

[cars for sale]

look at the source , the writer and the meat of this piece . A liberal's unproven "dead kill" number said
in print , tv et alacelebrity and there is the media's base line mantra number

second look how they say Oh My the # was higher than bla bla...

lastly, timing...that is why the source is important
this is a pre shot cause I bet the real numbers are 10 times as much and they don't want Sadam to be "that
bad".

[diamondjoe]

How dare you publish this trivial fluff when we have important issues to discuss, like determining whether or not the President posed with a fake turkey?

[kidd]

The math associated with the survey assumes that in households that lost a family member that only one person per household was killed.

In many accounts that I've read, multiple members from the same household were killed by Saddam.

Contrary to the analysis provided in the article, 60,000 may be a low estimate.

[zencat]

Liberals will claim it's all Bush's fault, and then blame him for liberating the rest.

[Voltage]

The Dems probably don't think this is half as bad as when Reagan was forcing school children to eat catchup as a vegetable!

At least they talked alot more about the vegetable problem than the massacres in Iraq.

[AD from SpringBay]

I don't see how this could happen. Didn't the UN draft a lot of resolutions to stop such?

[scarab9]

61,000 murdered?!?! But where are the WMD's/sarcasm off

[anniegetyourgun]

And they were also providing "food for oil" for these half-million dead.....

[babyface00]

Like the Holocaust, the numbers involved here are starting to rise to the level of incomprehensibility. At least, with 9/11, it was easier to get one's brain around a couple of thousand deaths.

61000, and just in Baghdad, is truly horrific. I'm not much for foreign interventions, but its hard to not make the case for the U.S.'s actions under W on this basis alone.

That the liberals can oppose the liberation of a tortured people solely because they hate the liberator is so illustrative of their corrupt philosophy.

[sgtbono2002]

All those people dead , relatives and friends, and still they are hostile to the Americans who saved them. They arent worth the effort

[MEG33]

In Baghdad?The Kurds and the Shiites were known victims but I thought Baghdad was inhabited by mostly Baathists.

[theDentist]

Like Hitler, he demanded unwavering devotion from all. Even a hint of suspicion and entire families would be slaughtered, no matter which group theey belonged to, as long as their imagined "treachery" was stamped out.

[RoseofTexas]

WAIT A COTTON PIC'IN MINUTE HERE....isn't CNN guilty of covering up all those murders when they were stationed in Iraq during that time?? This is like if CNN was stationed around the NAZI camps during WW2 and turned a blind eye to the millions of jews being slaughter! GO TO HELL CNN!

[FairOpinion]

"isn't CNN guilty of covering up all those murders when they were stationed in Iraq during that time?? This is like if CNN was stationed around the NAZI camps during WW2 and turned a blind eye to the millions of jews being slaughter!"

===

EXCELLENT POINT!

But CNN never misses to make a bid deal out of US missiles accidentally hitting a civilan or two.

[Right_in_Virginia]

Survey: Saddam Killed 61,000 in Baghdad

What are the "survey" results from the rest of the country?