Salah Omar al-Ali

Salah Omar Al-Ali (born 17 July 1938) was a member of the Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council, Iraqi Minister of Culture and Information from 1968 to 1970, and subsequently ambassador to Sweden, Spain and the United Nations from 1973 to 1981. He is currently a leading member of the Iraqi opposition. Although he was formerly a leading member of the Ba'ath Party, and was therefore very close to individuals such as Saddam Hussein who were subsequently accused of having committed a number of atrocities. Al-Ali is popular in Iraq, he resigned twice from high ranking governmental positions in protest. Early years Al-Ali was born in Salah ad Din Governorate, in a village near the city of Tikrit. His father, Omar, was a small landowner who was involved in agricultural production. Al-Ali eventually migrated to Baghdad where he attended law school and became active in politics. At the time, the two major political parties that were popular amongst Iraqi youth were the Iraqi Communist Party and the Ba'ath Party, both of which expounded leftist principles relating to the redistribution of wealth and the eradication of the old social classes that dominated Iraqi society at the time, and both of which were violently opposed to the British. In that context, Al-Ali joined the Ba'ath party. His activism generated a certain amount of hostility from the government.