Dr. Hussain Al-Shahristani
Hussain Al-Shahristani is the President of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. A graduate of Imperial College London and the University of Toronto, he started his professional life as a nuclear scientist at the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission in 1970. Dr. Al-Shahristani was imprisoned after refusing to work on Saddam Hussein’s nuclear weapons program. He spent ten years in solitary confinement at Abu-Ghraib prison, escaping to Iran and then Britain during the 1991 Gulf War. During the 1990s and early 2000s, Al-Shahristani was deeply involved in humanitarian work, providing aid to and campaigning for justice for the Iraqi people. He founded the Gulf War Victims organisation and served on the Iraqi Refugees Relief Council. After the fall of Saddam, Dr Al-Shahristani served as First Deputy Chairman in the Transitional National Assembly of Iraq, before holding ministerial roles in the government of Iraq, including as Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq for Energy Affairs, Minister of Oil and a former Minister of Higher Education. He was awarded the “Freedom from Fear 2012”, one of the Four Freedoms Award by the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute.
All Posts
