A Biography of ISCI Current Leader
His Eminence Sayed Abdul Aziz Mohsen Mahdi Al Hakim
Personal Information:
Born in 1950 and raised in Al Najaf Al Ashraf. He is the tenth and last son of Imam Mohsen Al Hakim, the highest religious leader of Shi’a worldwide during the late fifties and sixties. He is married and has two sons and two daughters.
He started his struggle against the former dictatorship in the late seventies and continued until the removal of Saddam regime.
Education:
His education was through the Al Najaf Al Ashraf religious school, known as the Al Hawza, until he reached the highest education level. His teachers were Imam Muhamed Baker Al Sadr and Imam Abo Al Kasem Al Khoie.
History:
He departed Iraq in 1980 for Syria after the murder of Imam Muhamed Baker Al Sadr. He then emigrated to Iran with his older brother Ayatollah Muhammad Baker Al Hakim, the former ISCI leader who was assassinated in Najaf in August 2003.
He became a member of the Iraqi Muslim Scholars group, and then became an executive director of ISCI directly after its establishment in 1982.
He is the founder of the Documentary Center for Human Rights in Iraq. The center has branches all over the world and has been a significant source of information for international Human Rights organizations. He also founded of the Al Ihsan Charity Foundation, which was responsible for the Iraqi refugee camps in Iran.
H.E. supervised a group of Iraqi Army Officers who were working against the former regime.
After the Saddam regime invaded Kuwait in 1990, he took the responsibility of preparing the Iraqi opposition groups’ conference. However, this conference was put on hold due to Operation Desert Storm which began in January 1991. After the brutal crushing of the Iraqi uprising in March 1991, H.E. headed a delegation to visit Saudi Arabia to negotiate with them on various issues, including the situation of Iraqi refugees in Saudi Arabia.
H.E. visited the United States on August 2002 as the representative of ISCI, along with other Iraqi leaders, to discuss the Iraqi crisis. He also headed the ISCI delegation to the London Opposition Conference in December 2002, and the Salahaddin Conference in March 2003.
Current Activities:
H.E. returned from Iran to Iraq directly after the toppling of the former regime to settle in Baghdad. He was in continuous consultation with Ayatollah Muhammad Baker Al Hakim in Al Najaf.
He was a member of the presidential committee of the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC). This was the first committee to lead Iraq after more than three decades of dictatorship.
He assumed the leadership of ISCI in August 2003, after the assassination of his brother late Ayatollah Muhammad Baker Al Hakim in Al Najaf. Seven of his brothers have been killed, six of them by the former dictator and the last one, Ayatollah Muhammad Baker Al Hakim, in Al Najaf by terrorists. The total martyrs from his family number sixty three member.
His last visit to the United States on December 2 – 8, 2006 was the third one and it was an invitation from President Bush to discuss with H.E. the situation in Iraq. The first was in August 2002 with the Iraqi opposition leaders then, and the second was in January 2004 as a member of IGC delegation to Washington.
He is leading the United Iraqi Alliance, the largest bloc in the Iraqi Council of Representatives. He has been elected after the first Iraqi elections and after the December 2005 elections as well.
He led the ISCI on the May 11th, 2007 general conference, which had many outcomes from electing the ISCI leadership to changing the name of the party and starting with a new political platform for the future.
Political Relations Bureau