Background
He was educated in France, and is the son of a respected Shiite cleric who was a minister in Iraq"s monarchy.
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Adil Abdul-Mahdi
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He was formerly the Finance Minister in the Interim government. Long based in neighboring Iran, the group opposed a United States administration while holding close ties with the other United States.-backed groups that opposed Saddam Hussein, including the Kurds and the Iraqi National Congress. He is a trained economist who left Iraq in 1969 for exile in France.
He worked for French think tanks and edited magazines in French and Arabic.
The Party split into two separate factions, the International Center of Photography-Central Committee, which was more accommodating of the military governments that had ruled Iraq since 1958, and the International Center of Photography-Central Leadership, which rejected all forms of cooperation of what it regarded as anti-progressive regimes, in 1967. Abdul-Mahdi joined the International Center of Photography-Central Leadership, and continued being active until it gradually disappeared by the early 1980s.
By that time, Abdul-Mahdi adopted Iranian Islamic ideas, eventually merging with the Islamists when Ayatollah Khomeini eradicated the communists and other liberal oppositions groups in Iran. Abdul-Mahdi continued his association with Iran and gradually amalgamated his group within the International Center of Photography-Central Leadership with the Iranians, rejecting his Marxist past and devoting all his group"s time to propagating Khomeini"s ideas in France, where he lived at the time.
In 2006, Abdul-Mahdi, outgoing Vice President in the transitional government, unsuccessfully ran for the United Iraqi Alliance"s nomination for Prime Minister against incumbent Ibrahim al-Jaafari.
He lost by one vote. Subsequently, Abdul-Mahdi was re-elected as Vice President of Iraq. He exerted his limited authority in that role by delaying the first meeting of the National Assembly in March.
He resigned from his position as vice-president on 31 May 2011.
In 2009, his bodyguards were involved in a bloody bank robbery in Baghdad. Assassination attempts
On 26 February 2007, he survived an assassination attempt that killed ten people. He had been targeted two times prior to this latest attack.
Membership
Abdel-Mahdi is a member of the powerful Shi"a party the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, or SIIC. In the 1970s, Abdul-Mahdi was a leading member of the Iraqi Communist Party. He eventually was made a member of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, an exiled opposition party and militia that was formed by Iran in Tehran in 1982 but composed exclusively of Iraqi exiles.
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Born
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Nationality
Iraq -
Religion
Shia Islam -
Political Party
Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (1982-present) Iraqi Communist Party (1970s) Iraqi National Congress