Terror organization: Popular Mobilization Forces

Status: At the time of his death, he was deputy chief of the PMF and regarded as one of Iraq’s most powerful men.

Role: From 1977, he was an opponent of Saddam Hussein. He became the commander of volunteer militias that grew from the need to combat ISIS, including the Kata’ib Hezbollah militia group. Cooperated with the IRGC against Saddam.

Allegations of terrorism have been leveled against him over his activities in Kuwait in the 1980s. He was sentenced to death in absentia in 2007 by a court in Kuwait for his involvement in the 1983 Kuwait bombings. The charges were dropped when the new Iraqi government was formed in 2004. The organizations he oversaw, such as the Popular Mobilization Forces have been reported to have close links to the IRGC’s Quds Force. Al-Muhandis was held responsible for planning the attack on the American embassy in Baghdad in late December 2019.

He was tracked down and killed by a targeted U.S. drone strike near Baghdad International Airport on 3 January 2020, which also killed the head of Iran’s expeditionary Quds Force Qassem Soleimani. He finished his studies in engineering in 1977 and the same year joined the Iraq-based Shi’ite Dawa Party, which opposed the Ba’athist government.

Military career

In 1979, after the activity of the Dawa Party was banned and hundreds of opponents were sentenced to death by Saddam Hussein. Al-Muhandis fled, across the border to Ahvaz in Iran, where the Iranians had set up a camp to train Iraqi dissidents, to undermine Saddam. He was known as Jamal al-Ibrahimi in Iran and he became a citizenof Iran after a marriage. He began working with IRGC in Kuwait in 1983, organizing attacks on embassies of countries that supported Saddam in the Iran–Iraq War. Hours after the December 1983 bomb attacks on U.S. and French embassies in Kuwait, he fled to Iran. He was later convicted and sentenced to death in absentia by a court in Kuwait for planning the attacks. He was later appointed a military adviser to the Quds Force, advising on attacks against the Iraqi military based in his hometown of Basra.

He returned to Iraq following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and served as a security adviser to the first Iraqi prime minister after the invasion, Ibrahim al-Jaafari. In 2005, he was elected to the Iraqi Parliament as a Dawa Party representative for the Babil Governorate. After the US figured out his real identity and the connection with the 1983 attacks, he had to escape to Iraq around 2006 or 2007. He had to flee to Iran. He formed Kata’ib Hezbollah between 2003 and 2007.

He returned to Iraq following the withdrawal of US troops (December 2011) to head the Kata’ib Hezbollah militia; he then became deputy chief of the Popular Mobilization Forces.

On 31 December 2019, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo named al-Muhandis, along with Qais Khazali, Hadi al-Amiri, and Falih Alfayyadh, as responsible for the attack on the United States embassy in Baghdad.

The war against ISIL in Iraq

After the formation of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) as a group in 2014 that originated to help Iraq defeat ISIL, he was appointed to command the group. The PMF group was composed of some 40 militias that fought in nearly every major battle against ISIL.

Abu Mahdi was killed on 3 January 2020 around 1:00 a.m. local time (22:00 UTC 2 January), by the U.S. drone strike which targeted Qassem Soleimani and his convoy near Baghdad International Airport.

Location: Iraq

Also Known As: Jamal Jafaar Mohammed Ali Ebrahimi, kunya Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis;

Born: Jamal Ja’far Muhd. Ali Al Ibrahim – 16 November 1954