Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis

Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis (real name Jamal Jafaar Mohammed Ali Ebrahimi) is an Iraqi military commander who heads the "Popular Mobilisation Committee" and is a participating leader in the Second Battle of Tikrit (March 2015). The organisations he oversees are reported to have close connections to the Iranian Quds force.

It was reported by Reuters that he was formerly a commander in the Kata'ib Hezbollah militia, and prior to that worked with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards against Saddam Hussein's regime.

Allegations of terrorism have been levelled against him over his activities in Kuwait in the 1980s. He was convicted to death in absentia by a court in Kuwait for his involvement in 1983 Kuwait bombings. Muhandis is on the United States' list of designated terrorists.

Biography

Jamal Jafaar al-Ibrahimi was born in 1954 in Basra, Iraq. He finished his studies in engineering in 1977 and in the same year joined the Dawa Party. When the activity of the Dawa Party was banned by Saddam Hussein, he fled to the Iranian city of Ahvaz where the Iranians set up a camp to train Iraqi dissidents. He was convicted for planning the attacks on U.S. and French embassies in Kuwait in retaliation of their support of Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war. In 2003, he returned to Iraq with the fall of Saddam Hussein and served as a security adviser to the first Iraqi prime minister after the U.S. invasion Ibrahim al-Jaafari. In 2005 he was elected to Iraqi Parliament as the representative of the Babil Governorate. When the U.S. officials discovered his background, they raised the issue with then-Iraqi prime minister Nouri Al-Maliki in 2007. After this he left Iraq and fled to Iran. He returned to Iraq after the withdrawal of US troops and is now deputy chief of Popular Mobilization Forces.