Prominent Shiite politician Ahmed Abdul Hadi Chalabi, a controversial politician who crusaded in Washington for the ouster of Saddam Hussein but later demanded that U.S. troops withdraw, died of a heart attack Tuesday.
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Haitham al-Jabouri, secretary of parliament’s financial panel, which Chalabi had chaired, said attendants found him dead of a heart attack in his Baghdad home on November 3.
In the buildup to the Iraq war, the wealthy, politically connected Iraqi exile supplied the US government a large amount of information that linked Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda and weapons of mass destruction.
He became a leading figure in Iraq’s exiled opposition in the 1990s and cultivated close ties with the future Vice President Dick Cheney and Washington’s so-called neo-conservatives, who favored a more muscular US policy in the Middle East. At one point his name was floated as a candidate for prime minister but he never managed to rise to the top of Iraq’s stormy, sectarian-driven politics.
Chalabi taught mathematics at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon before he embarked on a career in finance.
When the U.S. overthrew the Saddam regime, Chalabi was named one of the 25 members of the Iraqi Governing Council.
The year after the invasion, U.S. special forces raided his home in an apparent attempt to find evidence that he was spying for Iran. Chalabi denied the charges.
He opened Petra Bank in Jordan in 1977.
He continued to wield power and influence in Iraq, holding the posts of deputy prime minister and oil minister. He also lent support to the 2011 uprising in Bahrain led by that country’s Shiite majority against its Sunni monarchy.
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Chalabi is believed to be survived by his wife Leila, and four children.
