Bayan Jabr

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Baqir Solagh Jabr Al-Zubeidi, also known as Bayan Jabr, is currently serving as the Finance Minister of Iraq in the government of Nouri al-Maliki. He served as Minister of Interior, in charge of the police, in the Iraqi Transitional Government and was Minister of Housing and Reconstruction of the Iraqi Governing Council. He is a senior member of the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance as well as the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI).

Born in 1946 in the Maysan Governorate [link], Jabr became a Shiite activist while studying engineering at Baghdad University in the 1970s. He fled to Iran amid Saddam Hussein's crackdown on Shiite political groups and joined the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). He later headed SCIRI's office in Syria.

As Minister of Interior he was disliked among Sunni Arabs for heading an agency that is alleged to operate death squads and torture camps that target the Sunni civilian population. While acknowledging that some death squads have operated from inside the Interior Ministry, he claims that their existence within his agency is exaggerated. In one press conference, he has claimed that most sectarian killings are perpetrated by private militias.

On January 3rd 2006, his sister was reported kidnapped by Iraqi insurgents.[link] She was released two weeks later.

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