BAGHDAD, Iraq – Preliminary election returns Monday showed Iraqi voters divided along ethnic and religious lines with a commanding lead held by the religious Shiite coalition that dominates the current government.
Meanwhile, an Iraqi lawyer said at least 24 top former officials in Saddam Hussein’s regime were freed from jail Saturday without charges. They included biological and chemical weapons experts known as “Dr. Germ” and “Mrs. Anthrax.”
Early vote tallies suggested disappointing results for a secular party led by former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a U.S. favorite who hoped to bridge the often violent divide that has emerged between followers of rival branches of Islam since the fall of Hussein.
As expected, religious groups, both Shiite and Sunni, were leading in many areas, an indication that Iraqis may have grown more religious or conservative.
Still, the ruling Shiite coalition – known as the United Iraqi Alliance and endorsed by Iraq’s most prominent cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani – was unlikely to win the two-thirds majority, or at least 184 seats, needed to avoid a coalition with other parties.
A senior official in the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, one of the main groups in the United Iraqi Alliance, said the alliance expected to get about 130 seats.
Among the inmates freed Saturday were Rihab Taha, a British-educated biological weapons expert, who was known as “Dr. Germ” for her role in making bio-weapons in the 1980s, and Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash, known as “Mrs. Anthrax,” a former top Baath Party official and biotech researcher.
The official, who asked not to be identified because of fear of retribution from former Baathists, said those released also included Hossam Mohammed Amin, head of the weapons inspections directorate, and Aseel Tabra, an Iraqi Olympic Committee official under Odai Hussein, the former leader’s son.
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