Career
He was the Minister for Oil from January to April 2003 and the President"s chief of staff for several years after the 1991 Gulf War. He was the Iraqi Ambassador to Egypt, Turkey, Spain and Russia. He was accused by United States Army officers of helping Saddam Hussein plot assassination attempts He was convicted in 1959 of the attempted assassination of Prime Minister Abd al-Karim Qasim and sentenced to death, although Qassim pardoned Najim.
Following the invasion of Iraq by the United States and allied forces in 2003, he was depicted as the four of clubs in their deck of most-wanted Iraqi playing cards.
His assets were frozen under United Nations Security Council Resolution 1483 as a "senior official" and transferred to the Development Fund for Iraq. He was captured by Kurdish peshmerga near Mosul in April 2003.
