- Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq and Chairman of the Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council from 1979 until his overthrow by US forces in 2003. He was executed after being found guilty of war crimes at his trial in 2006. He was a member of the revolutionary Ba'ath Party, which espoused secular pan-Arabism, economic modernization, and Arab socialism. Saddam played a key role in the 1968 coup that brought the party to long-term power.
- Fakhruddin 'Iraqi
- Nouri Al-Maliki
Nouri Kamel Mohammed Hassan al-Maliki (Arabic: نوري كامل المالكي, transliterated "Nūrī Kāmil al-Mālikī"; born c. 1950), also known as Jawad al-Maliki, is the State Prime Minister of Iraq. He is a Shi'a Muslim, and is secretary-general of the Islamic Dawa Party. Al-Maliki and his government succeeded the Iraqi Transitional Government. His 37-member Cabinet was approved by the National Assembly and sworn in on May 20, 2006.
- Muqtada Al-Sadr
Muqtada al-Sadr is the fourth son of a famous Iraqi Shi‘a cleric, the late Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Mohammad Sadeq al-Sadr. He is also the son-in-law of Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir As-Sadr. While he does not hold any official title in the Iraqi government, he is one of the most influential religious and political figures in the country.
- Jalal Talabani
Jalal Talabani (born 1933), is an Iraqi politician, who was elected State President of Iraq on April 6, 2005, (sworn in the next day, April 7, and once again on April 22, 2006, by the Iraqi National Assembly. Talabani is the founder and secretary general of one of the main Iraqi Kurdish political parties, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). He was a prominent member of the Interim Iraq Governing Council, …
- Iyad Allawi
Dr. Iyad Allawi (born 1945) is an Iraqi politician, and was the interim Prime Minister of Iraq prior to Iraq's 2005 legislative elections. A prominent Iraqi political activist who lived in exile for almost 30 years, the politically secular Shia Muslim became a member of the Iraq Interim Governing Council, which was established by U.S.-led coalition authorities following the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
- Ahmed Chalabi
Ahmed Abdel Hadi Chalabi,<sup>1</sup> (born October 30, 1944) was interim oil minister in Iraq in April-May 2005 and December-January 2006 and deputy prime minister from May 2005 until May 2006. Chalabi failed to win a seat in parliament in the December 2005 elections, and when the new Iraqi cabinet was announced in May 2006, he was not awarded a post. Once dubbed the "George Washington of Iraq" by American neoconservatives, …
- Hoshyar Zebari
Hoshyar Zebari (born 1953) is the current Minister of Foreign Affairs of Iraq. A Kurd originally from Aqrah, a city in Iraqi Kurdistan, Zebari holds a masters degree in sociology from the University of Essex in the United Kingdom and studied political science in Jordan. He was the foreign spokesperson for the Kurdistan Democratic Party in the 1990s and represented the party to both, the United Kingdom and the United States.
- Tariq Aziz
Mikhail Yuhanna, later and more popularly known as Tariq Aziz or Tareq Aziz was the Foreign Minister (1983 – 1991) and Deputy Prime Minister (1979 – 2003) of Iraq, and a close advisor of former President Saddam Hussein for decades. Their association began in the 1950s, when both were Ba'ath party activists, while the party was still officially banned. Since Saddam Hussein was both Prime Minister and President of Iraq, …
- Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani
Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Husaini al-Sistani Arabic: السيد علي الحسيني السيستاني, Persian: سید علی حسینی سیستانی;. Born approximately August 4, 1930) is an Iraqi Grand Ayatollah, a Shi'a "marja". He is currently an important political figure in Post-invasion Iraq.
- Abdul Aziz Al-Hakim
Abdul Aziz al-Hakim is an Iraqi theologian and politician and the leader of SIIC, the largest political party in the Iraqi Council of Representatives. He was a member of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council and served as its president in December 2003. Brother of the Shia leader Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, he replaced him as leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq when Mohammed Baqir was assassinated in August 2003 in Najaf.
- Massoud Barzani
Massoud Barzani (born August 16, 1946) is the President of the Autonomous Kurdish Government in Iraq and leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party. He succeeded his father as the leader of the KDP in 1979. In 1995, he requested help from the Iraqi government to capture the city of Erbil from the rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) led by the current President of Iraq, Jalal Talabani, also a Kurd. Mr. Talabani obtained support from Iran in that struggle.
- April Fool
"April Fool" is the codename for the spy and double agent who allegedly played a key role in the downfall of the Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. According to General Tommy Franks, the commander of the U.S. military in the 2003 Iraq war, "April Fool", an American officer, was approached by an Iraqi intelligence agent working undercover as a diplomat. "April Fool" then sold to the Iraqi false "top secret" invasion plans provided by Franks' team.
- Daniel Pearl
Daniel Pearl was an American journalist who was kidnapped and murdered in Karachi, Pakistan. At the time of his kidnapping, Pearl had been investigating the case of Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, and alleged links between Al Qaeda and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). In March 2007, at a closed military hearing in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed reportedly boasted that he had personally beheaded Pearl.
- Lynndie England
Lynndie Rana England is a United States Army reservist who served in the 372nd Military Police Company. She was one of several soldiers convicted by the Army courts-martial in connection with the torture and prisoner abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad during the occupation of Iraq. England held the rank of specialist while serving in Iraq. Along with other soldiers, she was found guilty of inflicting sexual, physical and psychological abuse on Iraqi prisoners of war.
- Salam Pax
Salam Pax is a pseudonymous blogger from Iraq whose site "Where is Raed?" (see external links) received notable media attention during (and after) the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The pseudonym itself consists of the two words meaning "peace": Arabic "Salām" and Latin "Pāx". Within his blog, Salam discusses the war, his friends, disappearances of people under the government of Saddam Hussein, and his work as a translator for journalist Peter Maass.
- Ali Hassan Al-Majid
Ali Hassan Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti (born 1941) is a former Ba'athist Iraqi Defense Minister and military commander. A first cousin of former President of Iraq Saddam Hussein, he became notorious in the 1980s and 1990s for his role in the Iraqi government's campaigns of deportations and mass killings against its Kurdish and Shi'ite populations. He was captured following the 2003 invasion of Iraq and was charged with war crimes.
- Mahmoud Othman
Dr Mahmoud Ali Othman (b. 1938) was a member of the Interim Iraq Governing Council created following the United States's 2003 invasion of Iraq. A Kurd and Sunni Muslim, Othman was a member of the Political Bureau Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). He then founded the Kurdish Socialist Party. He was also the Chief Negotiator in the 1970 agreement with the Baath Party. He is now a leading member of the Iraqi National Assembly. Othman was born in Slemani.
- Barham Salih
Barham Ahmad Salih (born 1960) is a Kurdish politician who serves as Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq. He was elected to the Iraqi National Assembly in December 2005 as part of the Kurdistani Alliance list. Salih also chairs a committee on oil and energy policy.
- Taha Yassin Ramadan
Taha Yasin Ramadan al-Jizrawi was the Vice President of Iraq from March 1991 to the fall of Saddam Hussein in April 2003. Born in Mosul. He became a bank clerk after completing his education. In 1956 he joined the Ba'ath Party where he worked with Saddam Hussein, becoming a member of the Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council after the 1963 coup that brought the Ba'ath Party to power. For a time he led the Popular Army, …
- Execution Of Saddam Hussein
Former President of Iraq Saddam Hussein was executed by hanging after being convicted of crimes against humanity by the Iraqi Special Tribunal following his trial for the murder of 148 Iraqi Shi'ites in the town of Dujail in 1982 in retaliation for an assassination attempt against him. Saddam was president of Iraq from July 16, 1979 until April 9, 2003, when he was deposed during the 2003 invasion of Iraq by U.S.-led forces.
- Bilal Hussein
Bilal Hussein is an Associated Press photojournalist based in Fallujah, Iraq. One of his photographs was part of a package of 20 Associated Press photographs that won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography. His was an image of four insurgents in Fallujah firing a mortar and small arms during the U.S.-led offensive in the city in November 2004.
- Mowaffak Al-Rubaie
Dr Mowaffak Baqer al-Rubaie is an Iraqi politician, and the current Iraqi National Security Advisor in the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. He was elected to the Iraqi Council of Representatives in December 2005 as a nominee of the United Iraqi Alliance. A Shia Muslim and neurologist by training, al-Rabai'i was born in Kadhimiya and left Iraq in the early 1980s to study in Britain.
- Tariq Al-Hashimi
Tariq al-Hashimi is an Iraqi politician and the general secretary of the Iraqi Islamic Party. Along with Adil Abdul Mahdi, he is a Vice President of Iraq in the government formed after the December 2005 elections. As a Sunni, he took the place of fellow Sunni politician Ghazi al-Yawar. Three of his siblings (two brothers and one sister) were killed by Shiite death squads in 2006.
- Uday Hussein
Dr. Uday Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti (June 18, 1964 Baghdad - July 22, 2003 Mosul), was the eldest son of Saddam Hussein and his first wife, Sajida Talfah. He was for several years seen as the heir apparent of his father. He produced the newspaper "Babel" as well as the youth radio station Voice of Iraq (which ran American pop songs).
- Adnan Pachachi
Adnan Pachachi (born on May 14, 1923 in Baghdad), is an Iraqi politician. Pachachi is the scion of a Sunni Arab family with a long tradition in Iraqi politics and a graduate from Victoria College, Alexandria in Egypt. He was Iraq's permanent representative to the United Nations in 1959-65 and 1967-68, and as foreign minister during the regime of presidents Abdul Salam Arif and Abdul Rahman Arif in 1965-67.
- Adnan Al-Dulaimi
Adnan al-Dulaimi is an Sunni Iraqi politician and the leader of the General Council for the People of Iraq, a component of the Iraqi Accord Front which won 44 seats in the December 2005 general election. In April 2007 it was reported that the Supreme Judicial Council had requested that the Concil of Representatives lift his parliamentary immunity so he could be prosecuted for supporting Iraqi insurgents and deporting Shiites from west Baghdad.
- Curveball
Curveball was the designation for a claimed "Iraqi chemical engineer" who the United States claimed had served as an informant. Curveball would be the attributed source of pivotal information concerning weapons of mass destruction leading up to the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. The name Curveball is a reference to a curveball baseball pitch, which is US English slang for something that behaves indirectly, erratically, or surprisingly.
- Hussain Al-Shahristani
Hussain Ibrahim Saleh al-Shahristani is the current Iraqi Minister of Oil. He is a former nuclear scientist who was imprisoned in Abu Ghraib for ten years and subjected to torture for objecting to Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons programme. An independent member of the United Iraqi Alliance, he was previously the deputy speaker of the Iraqi National Assembly under the Iraqi Transitional Government and was considered for the post of Prime Minister in the current government.
- Kanan Makiya
Kanan Makiya is an Iraqi-American academic. He is the Sylvia K. Hassenfeld Professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at Brandeis University. Although he was born in Baghdad, he left Iraq to study architecture at M.I.T., later joining Makiya Associates to design and build projects in the Middle East.
- Mahmoud Al-Mashhadani
Mahmoud Dawud al-Mashhadani is an Iraqi politician and the former Speaker of the Iraqi Council of Representatives. He was elected to the Council of Representatives as part of the Sunni Arab-led Iraqi Accord Front list. He was nominated to the speakership by the IAF after the main coalition in the Council of Representatives, the United Iraqi Alliance, objected to the nomination of Tariq Al-Hashimi. He was nominated as part of a deal on government posts between the IAF, …
- Baha Mousa
Baha Mousa was an Iraqi civilian who died whilst in British custody in Basra during September 2003. On 14 September 2003 Baha, a 26 year old hotel receptionist, was arrested along with six other men and taken to a British base. Whilst in detention it is claimed that Baha and the other captives were hooded and severely assaulted by a number of British troops. Two days later Baha was found dead.
- Saleh Al-Mutlaq
Saleh Muhamed al-Mutlaq is an Iraqi politician who leads the Iraqi National Dialogue Front, the fifth largest political list in Iraqi National Assembly following the December 2005 general election. He is a Sunni Arab secular politician who called for the removal of foreign troops from Iraq. He was the chief Sunni Arab negotitator over the constitution, …
- Hussein Kamel
Hussein Kamel Hassan al-Majid was the son-in-law and second cousin of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. He defected to Jordan and took to helping the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) and the International Atomic Energy Agency IAEA inspection teams assigned to look for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Kamel rose through the army ranks to become Iraq's minister of military industries, …
- Atwar Bahjat
Atwar Bahjat (1976 - 22 February 2006) was an Iraqi journalist and reporter for al-Arabiya television who was abducted and brutally murdered while covering a story. She had previously worked for al-Jazeera. In the aftermath of the 2003 Iraq War she became one of the most familiar faces on Arabic-language satellite television.
- Ali Allawi
Ali Abdul-Amir Allawi was Minister of Trade and Minister of Defence in the cabinet appointed by the Interim Iraq Governing Council from September 2003 until 2004, and subsequently Minister of Finance in the Iraqi Transitional Government between 2005 and 2006. A Shia Muslim, Allawi was part of the Iraqi exile community in London during the rule of Saddam Hussein. He was one of the organizers of 'The Declaration of Iraqi Shia', a statement released in 2002.
- Riverbend
Riverbend is the pseudonymous author of the blog Baghdad Burning, launched August 17, 2003. Riverbend's identity is carefully hidden, but the weblog entries suggest that Riverbend is a young, unmarried Iraqi woman, from a mixed Shia and Sunni family, living with her parents and brother in Baghdad. Before the United States occupation of Iraq she was a computer programmer. She writes in an idiomatic English which appears to reflect a Western education.
- Adil Abdul-Mahdi
Adil (Adel) Abdul-Mahdi (al Muntafiki) is an Iraqi Shi'a politician, economist, and is one of the two current Vice Presidents of Iraq. He was formerly the Finance Minister in the Interim government. Abdel-Mahdi is a member of the powerful Shi'a party the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, or SIIC. Long based in neighboring Iran, the group opposed a United States administration but holds close ties with the other U.S.-backed groups that opposed Saddam Hussein, …
- Awad Hamed Al-Bandar
Awad Hamad al-Bandar (aka: Awad Hamad Bandar Alsa'doon) (January 2, 1945 - January 15, 2007) was an Iraqi chief judge under Saddam Hussein's presidency. He was the head of the Revolutionary Court which issued death sentences against 143 Dujail residents, in the aftermath of the failed assassination attempt on the president on July 8 1982 (a year before the U.S. assumed diplomatic ties with Hussein to help thwart their common enemy: Iran).
- Nadhmi Auchi
Nadhmi Auchi, born in 1937, is a British-resident, Iraqi-born billionaire businessman. In the "Sunday Times Rich List 2007" ranking of the wealthiest people in the UK he was placed 18th with an estimated fortune of £1,995 million. Nadhmi Auchi graduated in Economics and Political Science from the Mustansiriyah University, Baghdad in 1967. He also worked with the Iraqi Ministry of Oil, becoming Director of Planning and Development.