Harith al-Obeidi

Harith Mohey Al Deen Abd al-Obeidi (1961? 1964? – 12 June 2009) was an Iraqi politician and cleric and member of Parliament for the Iraqi Accord Front. He was assassinated on 12 June 2009.

Obeidi (also transliterated as ʻUbaydī, Ubaidi or Obaidi) was born in Baghdad into a Sunni Arab family. He studied Islamic jurisprudence at Al-Mustansiriya University in Najaf and at the Faculty of Islamic Sharia. He obtained a doctorate in Comparative Jurisprudence from Baghdad University and worked as a writer, academic and lecturer until the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Since the invasion he regularly gave sermons at Sunni-majority mosques.

After the invasion of Iraq, Obeidi became an active member of the General Council for the People of Iraq political group.

Although he called for the disarmament of all Iraqi militias, United States troops raided his home in September 2005 after receiving a false tip that he was linked to insurgents.

In January 2006 he called on kidnappers to release the American journalist, Jill Carroll, saying the "abduction and killing of foreigners harms the interest of the people". He also condemned the 5 January 2006 Iraq bombings in Karbala, but blamed the United States, saying "the occupation was responsible for every crime and the death of every citizen in Iraq. If the occupier would leave, Iraqis would live as brothers."

Obeidi was elected to the Council of Representatives of Iraq in the December 2005 general election. His party, the General Council for the People of Iraq, was one of the three components of the Iraqi Accord Front electoral list, which won 44 out of 275 seats. Obeidi became the deputy chairman of the Parliament's Human Rights Committee, where he campaigned against abuses in Iraqi prisons. He criticised the Ministry of Human Rights for not holding an inquiry into the treatment of prisoners. He led a parliamentary delegation that visited Justice Ministry prisons, and publicised prisoners' claims of arbitrary arrest, torture and rape. He called for the Defense and Interior Ministers to be summoned before parliament to answer complaints about prison conditions and also sectarian violence. He also called for a general amnesty towards captured Iraqi insurgents. He promoted the repatriation of 130 Algerian citizens who were held in Iraqi jails, accused of involvement in the Iraqi insurgency.

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