High Position in Iraqi Government
Al-Tikriti was a leading figure in the Mukhabarat, the intelligence service that later turned to another agency performing the duty of Secret Police, from the 1970s, later taking over as director. During his time in the secret police, al-Tikriti played a key role in the Iraqi regime's execution of opponents at home and assassinations abroad. He was also known for his ruthlessness and brutality in purging the Iraqi military of anyone seen as disloyal.
Al-Tikriti became Iraq's representative to the United Nations in Geneva—including the UN Human Rights Committee—in 1989. He was in Geneva for almost a decade, during which he is believed to have managed clandestine accounts for the Iraqi president's overseas fortune. This task was then taken over by a network of foreign brokers, since Hussein had decided that no one in Iraq could be trusted with this task.
U.S. officials characterized al-Tikriti as a member of what they called "Saddam's Dirty Dozen", responsible for torture and mass murder in Iraq. U.S. forces captured him on April 17, 2003. Al-Tikriti was the five of clubs in the most-wanted Iraqi playing cards.
Read more about this topic: Barzan Ibrahim Al-Tikriti
Famous quotes containing the words high, position, iraqi and/or government:
“When I was in high school I thought a vocation was a particular calling. Here’s a voice: “Come, follow me.” My idea of a calling now is not: “Come.” It’s like what I’m doing right now, not what I’m going to be. Life is a calling.”
—Rebecca Sweeney (b. 1938)
“He who is usually self-sufficient becomes exceptionally vain and keenly alive to fame and praise when he is physically ill. The more he loses himself the more he has to endeavor to regain his position by means of the opinion of others.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“I will cut the head off my baby and swallow it if it will make Bush lose.”
—Zainab Ismael, Iraqi housewife. As quoted in Newsweek magazine, p. 31 (November 16, 1992)
“There exists in a great part of the Northern people a gloomy diffidence in the moral character of the government. On the broaching of this question, as general expression of despondency, of disbelief that any good will accrue from a remonstrance on an act of fraud and robbery, appeared in those men to whom we naturally turn for aid and counsel. Will the American government steal? Will it lie? Will it kill?—We ask triumphantly.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)