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Image posted, RAMZI HAIDAR
The outlawed Baath Arab Socialist Party in Iraq today announced the death of prominent leader Izzat al-Douri, former Iraqi Vice President Saddam Hussein, at the age of 78.
This came in an audio recording via the party’s Facebook account. The recording reads: “In the land of Iraq and the land of Rabat and Jihad, Comrade Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri got off his horse today, the Knight of Baath and the Iraqi National Resistance.”
Al-Douri, born on July 1, 1942, assumed leadership of the party shortly after Saddam Hussein’s execution in late 2006.
In April 2015, the Iraqi government announced that al-Douri and his bodyguards had been killed near the Hamrin Mountains, north of the capital Baghdad, but this was later found to be untrue.
The size of Douri’s role in operations targeting security forces and the military in Iraq after the US invasion is unknown. Despite the appearance of several audio recordings calling on Iraqis to resist, there are doubts about his actual involvement on the ground in recent years due to his old age and the many diseases he suffered despite what is said on his leadership of the “Army of the Naqshbandi Order”
Image posted, Salah malkawi
Douri sometimes represented Saddam Hussein at conferences in Iraq.
Humble education
Al-Douri began his life in his hometown of Al-Dur, near the city of Tikrit, which comes from one of Saddam Hussein’s cities (Al-Awja village, which was the birthplace of Saddam Hussein) .
Al-Douri comes from a humble background and has been active in the Baath Party since the late 1920s.
He participated with Saddam Hussein in what is known as the July 17, 1968 revolution that overthrew the government of then Iraqi President Abdul Rahman Aref and established the Baath regime under the leadership of Ahmed Hassan Al-Bakr.
In 1993, Al-Douri participated in the Iraqi government sponsored “Campaign of Faith”, which aimed to promote acceptance of Islamic values in Iraqi society.
On November 22, 1998, Al-Douri survived an assassination attempt while visiting Karbala, south of the capital Baghdad.
Douri was deputy chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council in Iraq until 2003, when US-led Western forces occupied Iraq and overthrew Saddam Hussein’s regime.
He was one of the most wanted former Iraqi officials who were not captured by coalition forces.
The United States has offered a reward of ten million dollars to anyone who provides information on the place of the disappearance of the league.
The league is believed to have suffered from leukemia and therefore required blood transfusions every six months.
He visited the Austrian capital Vienna in 1999 for medical treatment. The Austrian opposition demanded that he be arrested for committing war crimes, but the government allowed him to leave the country.
The American newspaper The New York Times quoted Al-Douri warning the Kurds about the consequences of provoking unrest in Iraq with the outbreak of the Gulf War in 1991.
Al-Douri warned the Kurds: “If you have forgotten about Halabja, I want to remind you that we are ready to repeat the process again.”
Al-Douri was referring to the Halabja massacre, in which thousands of Kurds were killed when the city of Halabja came under chemical attack.
Al-Douri’s daughter was married for a short time to Saddam Hussein’s eldest son, Uday, who was assassinated with his brother Qusay in a US military operation near the city of Mosul in 2003.
