Career
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. Unlike most Shi'a of Iraq, Baqir Jabr is of mixed Turkish and Kurdish ancestry. Born in 1946 in the Maysan Governorate, Jabr became a Shi'a activist while studying engineering at Baghdad University in the 1970s.
He fled to Iran amid Saddam Hussein's crackdown on Shi'a political groups and joined the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). He later headed SCIRI's office in Syria. According to the Independent newspaper Jabr was a former commander of SCIRI's militia, the Badr Brigades.
Under Jabr's control the Interior Ministry in 2006 was accused by the United Nations human rights chief in Iraq, John Pace, of executing and torturing to death hundreds of Iraqis every month. She was released two weeks later after ransom was paid.
